DUBAI/PARIS: Rising fashion stars from across the world hit the runway at designer Matthieu Blazy’s latest show for Chanel.

Staged during Paris Fashion Week, the likes of Mona Tougaard and Bhavitha Mandava, who in 2025 made headlines as the first Indian model to open a show for Chanel, walked the runway.

For the show Tougaard, who has Danish, Turkish, Somali and Ethiopian ancestry, showed off a patchwork look with cutouts across the bodice. For her part, Mandava showed off a series of casual options, including knitwear.

Six months into his tenure at the Parisian stalwart, Blazy staged his second ready-to-wear collection at Paris Fashion Week Monday, where brightly colored cranes rose from a holographic floor — a deliberate signal that the construction is ongoing.

The audience inside the Grand Palais suggested the foundations are solid: Margot Robbie, Oprah, Jennie, Kylie Minogue, Lily-Rose Depp, Teyana Taylor and Olivia Dean all turned up.

Blazy took his cue from a quote from Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel: “We need dresses that crawl and dresses that fly.”

The collection was structured around that tension — plain against spectacular, function against fantasy — with a discipline his sprawling debut last October sometimes lacked.

The opening looks were austere by design.

Black knit zip-ups, tweed blousons and boxy overshirts arrived with little more than four gold buttons to signal they belonged to Chanel.

In the vast runway space, they could read as underwhelming. But Blazy’s point was architectural: the suit, he said, is “the first brick” — and everything else rises from it.

The collection’s most provocative move was its silhouette.

Blazy pulled waistlines dramatically low — belts slung to mid-thigh, pleated skirts starting where blazers ended.

The references were retro flapper filtered through a modern lens: drop-waisted twinsets, patchwork dresses with floral embroidery, vivid patterned knits with a twenties pulse.

A furry coat in bold geometric color could have been worn in a chic part of London's Camden.Whether the ultra-low waistlines will land with the well-heeled clients who pack Chanel’s front rows is another question.

Selling a radically new proportion to women with deep loyalty to the house is a different challenge than winning critical praise. The final stretch answered that concern with force. Sequined plaid suits arrived in dazzling color.