The first time I realised my partner was ‘The One’ was a moment so deceptively ordinary, you might actually roll your eyes upon reading this. We were exiting my apartment building in the afternoon when he doubled back and handed me his sunglasses. “It’s very bright, you’ll get a headache,” he said. A man’s act of remembering a throwaway detail shared casually months ago. A woman’s surprise at being seen and cared for in that wholly quotidian, impossibly real way. When I told my partner it was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for me, he did actually roll his eyes. When I recounted the incident to my best friend, she understood immediately.. Women are so used to shrinking themselves—in public, at the workplace, in marriages, at the gym—that when we are seen and remembered, strange quirks, weird medical conditions and all, well… we fall in love.. Matthieu Blazy understands this simple truth that evades so many others of his sex. For Chanel’s celebrated Métiers d’art 2026 show last December, the house’s new creative director did not fly his audience to a tropical island or plop a Swedish iceberg (RIP Karl Lagerfeld) in the centre of the runway. Blazy made them schlep down to an unused subway station in New York. Hardly the epitome of glamour. Then, as a train rolled in and a cast of characters poured out in every direction, he forced us to look at, and fall for, the details like only a true fashion nerd can.. Courtesy of Chanel. The show made it clear that Blazy hadn’t just rabbit-holed into the Chanel archives. He’d also invested time in getting to know Coco Chanel, the woman. Everywhere you looked, there were cheeky references to her life, waiting to be identified. A red scarf slung low across the hips of a black co-ord set, styled like Mademoiselle herself. A tweed suit woven to look like leopard print, an ethical homage to her love for fur. A leather jacket hand-painted with ‘Tonight or Never’, recalling the 1931 film that marked Chanel’s debut as a Hollywood costume stylist. Then, the vocabulary expanded. The fashion nerd flexed. Intermingled with allusions to his chosen ancestor were everyday women Chanel might have met on her pit stop in New York. The off-duty showgirl waltzing home from Broadway, feathered fan in hand. The Upper East Side cat lady. The mob boss, dressed to kill.
