New York has not hosted a Chanel spectacle since 2018, when Karl Lagerfeld unfurled his Métiers d’Art collection inside The Met’s Temple of Dendur. Last night, the house returned and, in true Matthieu Blazy fashion, it doubled down.
Fresh off his lauded spring 2026 debut in Paris, Blazy staged not one but two Métiers d’Art 2026 shows in Manhattan. A 3pm presentation was followed by a 7pm reprise. Both unfolded inside a nondescript station at 168 Bowery, where a stationary subway car became the gateway to his latest vision.
Guests lined worn wooden benches as models stepped out of the train and onto the platform, couture unfurling beneath fluorescent light and tiled walls.
The front row was unmistakably New York. A$AP Rocky and Margaret Qualley, Teyana Taylor, Jessie Buckley, Ayo Edebiri, Tilda Swinton, Meg Ryan, Bowen Yang, Dapper Dan and Christine Baranski were among those in attendance.
Many have lived, studied or built careers in the city and remain fixtures within its cultural fabric. Their presence gave the night the air of a homecoming rather than an industry takeover.
For Chanel, it was exactly that. Gabrielle Chanel first arrived in New York in 1931 en route to Hollywood.
Decades later, Lagerfeld returned repeatedly, culminating in his final Temple of Dendur show. Blazy, too, carries the city with him, shaped by three formative years working under Raf Simons at Calvin Klein. If Paris is Chanel’s origin myth, New York is its proving ground.
Blazy traced the anti-hierarchy of the subway, where one fare carries everyone in the same direction — bankers, mothers, students, night-shift workers. The cadence of that collective movement felt stitched into every look.
Slouchy denim opened the show, some crafted from Lesage embroidery disguised as jeans. Sharp tweeds followed, including a leopard print suit that perfectly balanced irreverence and tradition.
The styling felt drawn from the platform itself. Coats draped over bags, knits tied at the waist, shoulder bags tucked close. A camel quarter zip with light wash jeans looked lifted from a downtown morning commute. Nothing felt misplaced.
Yet the Chanel codes pulsed throughout. Little black dresses, flapper silhouettes, pastel flashes, veiled fascinators, opera capes and plunging beaded gowns appeared in steady rhythm, lighter and more fluid than before.
Humour cut through in sequinned terriers, zebra striping and a bedazzled “I Heart NY” tee beneath tweed, a playful nod to Canal Street replication and Lagerfeld’s graffiti era.
Look closer and the whimsy deepened: ladybirds glinted across tailoring, and a Chanel bag embellished with a golden giraffe’s head and stick-like legs emerged as one of the night’s quiet talking points — hidden creatures roaming Blazy’s subway fantasy like an urban jungle in miniature, revealed only to the most attentive eye.
Couture at rush hour should not make sense. Yet in Blazy’s hands, it achieves a kind of metropolitan inevitability.
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