Prepare for bouclé jackets, quilted chain-link bags galore and an outfit formula that is proving to be consumer catnip
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ust six months after Matthieu Blazy unveiled his debut collection for Chanel, and a week after it landed in stores, excitement over the new designer has reached fever pitch. There have been queues outside shops, grapples at the tills and dozens of social media posts bragging about purchases. Now, Blazy’s Chanel effect is coming for the high street. Prepare for bouclé jackets and quilted chain-link bags galore.
“It is a good sign that it has become immediately a reference point for the high street,” says Mario Ortelli, a managing partner at the luxury advisory firm Ortelli & Co. “When a new product and new creative direction is successful it is copied by the high street. If not, it means it is not relevant or is only relevant for a niche set of consumers.”
Fuelling this latest round of Chanel-mania is Blazy’s first video campaign. Just minutes after launching online earlier this week it had racked up hundreds of thousands of views. Starring Margot Robbie, it riffs on Kylie Minogue’s 2002 music video for Come into My World, which saw the pop star duplicated multiple times as she ran errands on a Parisian street. Acting as a conversation between two different eras, the pairing of Minogue and Robbie has generational reach. Both starred in Neighbours – Minogue as Charlene from 1986 to 1988, Robbie as Donna from 2008 to 2011. Some shoppers will remember Minogue’s original video, some will just know Robbie as Barbie, while others, including gen Z, have got the millennium bug for Y2K fashion.
