Matthieu Blazy Named Chanel’s New Creative Director

PARIS — At a time when luxury brands are cycling through designers at increasing speed, Chanel hopes to have found a long-term match in Matthieu Blazy.

The French house said on Thursday it has selected the former Bottega Veneta creative director as its new artistic director of fashion activities, putting an end to months of speculation around the position described as the most coveted job in fashion.

This follows a report on WWD.com on Nov. 14 that Blazy had emerged as a leading contender for the plum Paris post.

Blazy will be responsible for all haute couture, ready-to-wear and accessories collections and will report to Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion and president of Chanel SAS.

The 40-year-old designer is due to join the house in the first half of 2025, most likely in April, and will show his first collection in October, Pavlovsky told WWD in an interview.

Chanel views it as a serious commitment.

“We hope to be together for 10, 15 years or more. We’re just at the start of our story,” the executive said. “Together we’ll be able to write a new chapter for the brand.”

Blazy succeeds Virginie Viard, who exited Chanel last June after an uneven five-year tenure. He becomes only the fourth official creative director in the history of the 114-year-old brand, known for its tweed suits, quilted handbags and No.5 perfume.

A number of lesser-known designers, including Ramon Esparza, an acolyte of Cristóbal Balenciaga, and Philippe Guibourgé, best known for designing the Miss Dior line, created its collections between the death of founder Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel in 1971 and the arrival of Karl Lagerfeld in 1983.

“I am thrilled and honored to join the wonderful house of Chanel. I look forward to meeting all the teams and writing this new chapter together,” Blazy said in a statement provided to WWD.

With Blazy’s appointment, the Rue Cambon house is definitively turning the page on the era of Lagerfeld, who was its creative director for 36 years, with Viard as his right-hand woman.

But the honeymoon will have to wait, as Blazy has to sit out the noncompete clause of his contract with his previous employer, Kering, which confirmed his departure on Thursday and named Louise Trotter his successor.

In his three years leading Bottega Veneta, Blazy made the brand’s show one of the hottest tickets in Milan, attracting the likes of Jacob Elordi, Julianne Moore, A$AP Rocky, Michelle Yeoh and Kendall Jenner to his latest display.

He was appointed creative director of Bottega Veneta in November 2021, when he rose from ready-to-wear designer to succeed Daniel Lee at the design helm, marking his ascension to the top rungs of fashion after a career in the shadows with brands including Raf Simons, Maison Margiela and Celine.

The French Belgian designer has won consistent acclaim for collections hinged on sophisticated, grown-up chic, and haute craftsmanship.

He’s also been gaining renown as a fashion showman capable of pulse-pounding runway action and imaginative sets, which for spring 2025 consisted of leather beanbag chairs in 15 animal shapes.

“Matthieu Blazy is one of the most gifted designers of his generation,” Alain Wertheimer, global executive chairman, and Leena Nair, global chief executive officer of Chanel, said in a joint statement.

“His vision and talent will reinforce the energy of the brand and our position as a leader in luxury. Under Bruno Pavlovsky’s leadership, we are confident that Matthieu Blazy will continue to shape what’s next and write a new page in Chanel’s creation,” they added. 

Pavlovsky revealed that Blazy edged out two other finalists to snag the post, following an exhaustive search that considered not just top-tier designers but “number twos, number threes and number fours” across the industry.

In the last six months, the rumor mill has churned out potential candidates including Hedi Slimane, Simon Porte Jacquemus and Pieter Mulier. Pavlovsky declined to confirm any names but said the talent pool was thriving.

“Genuinely, all the people we met were great and I understand why luxury and fashion have such energy,” he said.

“Very quickly, we narrowed it down to three people with whom we spoke, but Matthieu stood out immediately because he has a track record, a vision of Chanel and a modernity that seduced us,” he continued.

“We chose the person whose values, talent and vision of women, of our clients, were the best fit for us. And a key point for me was that I sensed great admiration and respect for the heritage and the work done by Mademoiselle Chanel, by Karl and by Virginie,” Pavlovsky said.

“That was important to me, because it wasn’t about a kind of competition over image and size. It was about the depth of what the brand stands for, and how we could build on that to continue telling our story,” he noted.

It marks the first time the privately owned company has recruited an external candidate for the top fashion creative post since Lagerfeld was appointed in 1983. Viard was seen as his natural successor after the legendary designer’s death in 2019.

The legendary German designer had engineered one of the modern fashion industry’s first and most successful brand rejuvenations and propelled the fabled French name from near obscurity to the summit of international luxury.

Viard gave the brand a more feminine bent and sought to appeal to a younger and more diverse demographic with her athletic-inspired clothes, multiplying Chanel’s ready-to-wear business by 2.5 during her tenure. But online commenters skewered her last collections and the brand felt the time had come for a change.

Born in Paris in 1984, Blazy is a graduate of famed visual arts school La Cambre in Brussels, and he started his fashion career as men’s designer for Raf Simons.

From 2016 to 2019, Blazy worked at Calvin Klein as part of the team Simons brought to New York, working on the men’s and women’s collections as design director.

Before Calvin Klein, Blazy worked in the studio of Celine under then-creative director Phoebe Philo, becoming senior designer in 2014, and for four years at Maison Margiela.

Chanel took its time to plot its next move even though the creative transition coincided with a period of stalled demand in China, where it staged its recent Métiers d’Art show, and a drop in spending among aspirational customers in Western markets.

This reflects the strength the brand, a key point for Chanel’s management team led by Nair.

“We defined the criteria that were essential for Chanel, and among these criteria, there is obviously the brand before the personality,” Pavlovsky said.

“I won’t name names, but some people have shown they can move from brand to brand and their style remains fairly identical, and the brand has to adapt,” he said.

“Our brand is strong and has stood the test of time. It stands for values that we want to nurture. It’s not about carrying someone else’s vision. We believe that Matthieu’s talent and power lies in the fact that he has the capacity to come into the brand and drive it forward,” he added.

The stakes are high. Chanel again delivered record revenues in 2023, with sales up 16 percent at comparable rates to $19.7 billion, although price increases alone accounted for a 9 percent progression.

In the last decade the company has more than doubled its revenues and headcount, and now ranks as the world’s second-largest luxury brand behind Louis Vuitton, with 36,500 employees at the end of 2023.

Blazy will be expected to churn out 10 collections a year, including two haute couture collections, six ready-to-wear collections, including the cruise and Métiers d’Art shows, and two “tactical” lines, Coco Beach and Coco Neige.

His remit does not extend to the fragrance and cosmetics, or jewelry and watches divisions, which have different business models, said Pavlovsky, who emphasized that teamwork was key to Chanel’s continued success.

“Chanel’s fashion business has become huge. After all, we’re 10 or 15 times the size of Bottega Veneta or some emerging brands,” he said.

“You can’t have one person doing everything. It’s the product of a strong and experienced collective working in tandem with a person who sets the tone with a collection or a show,” Pavlovsky insisted.

Revenues at Bottega Veneta totaled 1.6 billion euros in 2023 and the brand posted 4 percent organic growth in the first nine months of 2024, bucking the overall negative trend at Kering.  

While Chanel dwarfs his previous employers in scale, Blazy has some key qualifications. He comes with experience in haute couture, having designed Margiela’s Artisanal line.  

“It’s something he finds very inspiring, and no doubt a big part of what makes Chanel so enticing,” Pavlovsky said. “With haute couture, designers experience moments of pure joy.”

Crucially, Blazy has a track record of delivering desirable handbags at Bottega Veneta, including his hit Kalimero, Andiamo and Sardine styles.

“Chanel is first and foremost about the product,” Pavlovsky said. “Matthieu is passionate about it, and it shows. The way he did such an exceptional job of reenergizing the product at Bottega Veneta, over a very short period of time, demonstrates that this is truly his signature.”

His appointment is the latest step in a long-term succession plan set in motion with Nair’s arrival in 2021. The former Unilever executive assumed a title previously held by Wertheimer, who then became global executive chair of the company.

However, Wertheimer remains a key decision-maker and is said to have personally informed Viard of his decision to bring in a new designer.

“There is a generational handover underway, and that generational change has to reflect the times. It’s part of a process that is essential to ensure the future strength of the brand,” Pavlovsky said.

“Today, we are a large, powerful corporation with several business models and our organization needs to reflect the size and requirements of this company,” he added. “Matthieu’s arrival fits perfectly into this dynamic.”

Like Lagerfeld before him, Blazy has signed a renewable contract for his services, the executive said. While he did not give a duration for the initial term, he said Blazy would have two years to find his bearings at Chanel, in keeping with his “authentic” approach.

“Matthieu has a deep vision of the brand that will allow us to go even further than with a more show-off approach that goes fast. I think that on the contrary, he’s someone who has to move at his own pace,” Pavlovsky said.

“We have a very good feeling about it, but we’ve given ourselves two years, which is the time it takes to get a feel for the brand. I’m super confident, but now we have to do the work,” he added.