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Chanel’s new showman, Matthew Blazey, took his designs to the street on Tuesday — or rather, underground, staging a New York runway show on an actual subway platform.
The designer, just weeks after his appearance Paris debut for channel In October, captured a decommissioned portion of manhattanBowery Station for his first Metiers d’Art collection. The annual show, which takes place in a different city every year, celebrates the craftsmanship of the artisans who partner with the channel.
In this case, it was two shows – one in the afternoon and one in the evening. And befitting the first Chanel show in New York since 2018, there were plenty of VIPs there: A$AP Rocky, Tilda Swinton, Ayo Adebiri, Rose Byrne, Kristen StewartSofia Coppola, Lupita Nyong’o, Jessie Buckley, Margaret Qualley, Bowen Yang, Jon Bon Jovi and many more.
The location was kept a top secret. Guests entered through a door at 168 Bowery, and at first, it seemed as if Chanel had perhaps decorated an event venue resembling a subway station, with tiled walls, turnstiles, and a newsstand (with its own specialty newspapers).
But down a flight of stairs was the real stage. Guests sat on bleacher seats that resembled subway benches. “Stay away from closing doors!” The announcement came to a familiar soundtrack to New Yorkers. Just then a train came and the models came out of the cars.
The show was a stark contrast to the last Metiers d’Art collection in New York in 2018, when the late designer karl lagerfeld The Egyptian Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art felt like a mini-Met Gala, with dresses reflecting the luxury of Egyptian royalty.
Blazey was inspired not by royalty but by ordinary urban travelers of different eras and types coming together since the 1920s.
“The New York subway belongs to everyone,” the designer said in his show notes. “Everyone uses it. There are students and game-changers, politicians and teenagers. It’s a place full of wonderful encounters, collisions of pop ideals.”
His models were strolling on the platform, some checking for incoming trains – feigning irritation at their delay – or leaning against a post and waiting. Their number increased until, at the end, there was a virtual fashion heyday, with the eclectic soundtrack playing the “Happy Days” theme song as a finale.
Some of these passengers wore classic Chanel suits – perhaps with “I (Heart) NY” T-shirts – and others, tweed coats, flowing black capes or brightly patterned skirts. The purpose of all was to show the craftsmanship involved.
Speaking after the afternoon show, Stewart said, “It felt like breaking the system.” “I really had an emotional response to the show. I felt like I saw several different versions of one person walking. It wasn’t a woman.”
Like others, Stewart had no idea what the show’s theme would be, and felt that the subway environment felt like “a flurry of fleetingly captured moments”.
“Like, ‘Where’s she going?’ I wanted to go with them,” Stewart said. “I believed in it. It’s all trickery, but when you get a really good impression of the truth, you find your own. It felt real to me.”
It was surreal enough that the channel printed its own “newspaper” – called La Gazette – to accompany the show with articles and interviews. In an interview with Blazey the designer was quoted as saying that the collection was partly inspired by Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s 1931 visit to New York.
And he sang the praises of the metro.
“It’s almost like it’s the whirlpool of the city,” Blazey said. “It connects everything.”