A New Creative Director Inherits an Archive, Not a Ready-Made Identity
An archive does not speak with a single voice. It contains successes, experiments, different eras and quite a few things that would be wiser not to bring back.
When a new creative director arrives, the temptation is to open those doors as though the answer were already waiting inside: a jacket, a bag, a colour, a logo. Choose the right artefact, adjust the proportions and wait for the verdict on the first show. It is a convenient reading. It is also the quickest way to turn memory into a vintage wardrobe with a very large budget.
An archive provides material. Identity comes from the decisions made about that material: what to keep, what to shift, what to abandon and, above all, what can be made useful again.
Chanel under Matthieu Blazy offers an unusually clear view of this process. Not because he has already delivered a definitive answer. Quite the opposite. Since Spring Summer 2026, he has repeated certain decisions often enough for us to begin to see what he intends to build.
Selection comes before the archive
Chanel has many recognisable codes, perhaps too many to use all at once without producing a caricature of Chanel. The House’s official timeline places three references that became universal within the space of just three years: the 2.55 bag in 1955, the braided tweed suit in 1956 and the two-tone shoe in 1957.
They are often treated as aesthetic signs. Originally, they were very practical answers. The 2.55 freed the hands through its chain shoulder strap; the beige and black contrast of the shoe visually lengthened the leg and shortened the foot; Gabrielle Chanel’s wardrobe pursued freedom of movement and a less ceremonial relationship with the body. The House’s account of its founder places jersey, the marinière, tweed, the little black dress, the two-tone shoe, the shoulder bag and pearls within the same grammar.
The number of icons in an archive matters less than the principle that holds them together.
"Coco Chanel makes adjustments to the garment directly on the model. The creative direction takes shape based on what she decides to remove. Credit: Paris-Match, “1958, notre cavalcade historique, Coco Chanel est encore là.” Paris Musées, Musée Carnavalet. CC0."
Blazy chose to go back to a point before those objects became symbols. In the work behind his debut, documented by Vogue, the Chanel jacket was traced back to a men’s tweed coat, cut at the hip and closed until another silhouette emerged. A quotation would have reproduced the jacket. The translation lay in recovering the gesture that had first generated it: taking a man’s garment, removing its rigidity and putting it at the service of a woman in motion.
It is less photogenic than a large logo, but considerably more fertile.
A show proposes. The following seasons answer
A creative director’s first collection is often treated like a referendum: people either like it or they do not; it respects the House or betrays it. Yet a debut can reveal a selection and an intention. It can hardly prove that a system has been built.
Then there is the fashion calendar, with its particular brand of cruelty. While the public is still debating look number one, the studio is already working on deliveries, the next collection and products far less likely to reach the front row. Somewhere within that overlap, away from the applause, an intuition has to learn how to hold.
The evidence comes later. We need to see whether a decision returns without becoming a copy, whether it crosses different categories and whether it still makes sense once the show setting and styling disappear.
For the Spring Summer 2026 debut, the House described an imagined conversation with Gabrielle Chanel, built around the masculine-feminine relationship and around tweed, jersey and silk, “reworked, recut and reinterpreted”. The idea could have ended with the press release. Some of the products, however, show the next stage. The tweed jacket presented on the Italian website was listed at €9,900; the lambskin 2.55, deliberately marked and softened like an object that has already been lived with, at €12,500. These were indicative prices recorded on 3 September 2026. They are not simply runway images. They are decisions about material, workmanship, industrialisation and positioning that ask the customer to recognise Chanel without finding it untouched.
The bag is especially revealing. The 1955 model has not been disguised as something new with a seasonal colour. Its composed shape is disturbed by the idea of time and use. It remains a 2.55, but it no longer behaves like an object meant to be kept behind glass. An archive can, after all, be treated like a museum. The customer is not required to dress as a visitor.
From signature to product system
The collections that followed begin to make continuity visible. In Spring Summer 2026 Haute Couture, transparency and muslin turn the suit into a second skin. In Métiers d’art 2026, the direction moves through embroidery, tweed, footwear, shirts, knitwear and bags, drawing on the expertise of Lesage, Massaro, Goossens, Lemarié and the other ateliers. In the Cruise 2026/27 collection shown in Biarritz, the little black dress and the double C return across silk foulard, raffia and washed cotton canvas, within a wardrobe closer to the beach than to a Parisian salon.
Not every solution has the same strength, nor does it need to. What matters at this stage is the recurrence of the thinking: freedom of movement, the meeting of masculine and feminine, surfaces that feel less untouchable, codes carried from one category to another. A grammar begins when its words can form more than one sentence.
Price is part of this construction too. If the new language remains confined to image pieces while the carry-over jackets, knitwear, shoes and bags still speak the previous one, the change exists mainly on the runway. When material, proportion and attitude reach the products on which the retail business depends, creative direction has started to alter the real brand, the one the customer encounters and buys.
The second-season test
A debut, then, is not enough to assess a new creative appointment. From the following season onwards, five simple facts are worth watching:
Does the selected code return with a different function, or is it merely repeated?
Does it move from clothing into accessories, footwear and knitwear?
Is it still recognisable without the show styling?
Does it generate a family of products or a single piece intended for photographs?
Does it reach the permanent product offer while maintaining a credible relationship with materials, workmanship and price?
These questions move attention away from personal taste and towards the ability to build. A creative director can produce a magnificent debut without yet having established an identity for the House. An uncertain first collection can also develop, through work, into a more precise language. The industry rarely allows for that time. It wants a verdict before the first products have properly reached the shops.
For now, Chanel and Blazy suggest another possibility: looking for a behaviour in the past that is still active, rather than choosing between worshipping the archive and staging a spectacular break from it. Tweed, the 2.55 and the two-tone shoe are famous. Fame does not guarantee energy.
The rest will be decided by the coming seasons. They may even contradict this reading. That is what happens when you observe a language while someone is still writing it.
Romina Tosi
Disclaimer
The views expressed in this article reflect my personal analysis of the information available at the time of publication. The sources used are publicly available and may include official documents, trade union communications, press reports, and other materials accessible to the public.I do not disclose confidential information or information obtained through privileged professional access. Facts, statements, allegations, and opinions are presented according to their nature. Any reference to individuals, companies, or specific cases is included to examine matters of broader relevance to the industry and is not intended to attribute unlawful conduct beyond what is expressly documented in the cited sources. Assessments concerning industrial strategies, financial decisions, and production models are personal opinions, not findings of fact or definitive judgments.
If you identify an error or inaccuracy, please let me know. I will verify the information and correct it where necessary.
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