LIFESTYLE | JULY 2026 | 5 MIN READ
GABY AND THE BEANSTALK —
HOW MATTHIEU BLAZY IS TURNING CHANEL INTO A COUTURE FAIRY TALE
Paris, July 7, 2026. Suddenly, the Grand Palais is no longer the Grand Palais. Giant vines climb all the way to the ceiling, oversized flowers take over the space, and butterflies, golden eggs, and shoes that look as though they have fallen straight out of a storybook appear throughout the scene. And somewhere between Pedro Pascal, Tilda Swinton, and perhaps the most attentive front row of Couture Week, Matthieu Blazy unveils his second Haute Couture collection for Chanel.
The title: “Gaby and the Beanstalk.” The starting point is surprisingly personal. In Gabrielle Chanel’s former apartment on Rue Cambon, Blazy discovered an old fairy-tale book from her personal library: Les Fées, Contes des Contes by Charles Perrault. What initially sounds like a small historical discovery becomes, in Blazy’s hands, the starting point for an entire world. Because in this staging, Coco Chanel herself almost becomes a fairy-tale character — a woman whose life, rise, and mythology already contain all the ingredients of a modern legend. Blazy takes that story and tells it not nostalgically, but with a certain delight in the absurd. Jack and the Beanstalk, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Puss in Boots, Swan Lake, and The Wizard of Oz provide the references, yet Chanel never becomes a costume.
That is precisely what makes the collection so interesting. Between fairy-tale details and the house’s classic codes, the looks feel both familiar and completely new. Tweed is confronted with playful elements, flowers become oversized, silhouettes take on a sculptural quality, and even the accessories suddenly seem like little characters in a story.
It is couture with humor — but never without precision. And perhaps that is Blazy’s real strength: he understands that Chanel does not constantly need to be reinvented. It needs to be reread.
The house already possesses one of the most recognizable visual languages in fashion history — tweed, camellias, pearls, black and white, the iconic jacket. The challenge, then, is not to invent new codes, but to make the existing ones feel surprising again. Blazy achieves this by giving them something luxury fashion could use more of right now: imagination. Because while the industry increasingly talks about commercial relevance, virality, and instantly recognizable products, this collection is a reminder that couture once had a different purpose.
It was meant to create a world. Not just a look for Instagram. Not just a product with a waiting list. A world. And Chanel might just be the perfect fairy tale for it. Gabrielle Chanel herself turned her biography into a kind of mythology — the orphan from Aubenas, the seamstress, the designer, the woman who rewrote the rules of female dress and transformed simplicity into one of the most powerful luxury languages in the world. Blazy takes that story seriously without worshipping it. He allows it to become playful. This is particularly evident in the setting. The Grand Palais feels less like a traditional Couture salon and more like an enchanted garden that has become slightly too beautiful and, at the same time, slightly unsettling.
That ambiguity is exactly what makes it compelling. This is not the sweet fairy tale you remember reading as a child. It is the adult version — glamorous, surreal, and carrying a subtle darker edge. The front row fit perfectly into the narrative, too. Pedro Pascal, Tilda Swinton, Michelle Yeoh, and Catherine Deneuve sat where fashion, film, and mythology have been intersecting for decades. And perhaps that was precisely the point: Chanel is once again showing that couture has never been just about clothing. It is a form of storytelling. Blazy seems to take that idea particularly seriously. His second Couture collection for Chanel therefore feels less like a demonstration of what he can do and more like an invitation to step into his version of the house. A version in which the past is not preserved, but spun forward. In which Coco Chanel does not stand as a statue in a museum, but as the protagonist of a story that is far from finished. And perhaps that is the most beautiful way to approach a legacy:
You do not preserve it by letting it stand still.
You give it a new story.