Just 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. Starring Margot Robbie, it riffs on Kylie Minogue’s 2002 music video for Come into My World. The campaign features several identical Robbies wearing an oatmeal tweed jacket with frayed cuffs, styled unbuttoned over a simple white vest with a pair of stonewash straight-leg jeans. This specific outfit formula is proving to be consumer catnip.
High street retailers are already copying the look. M&S has gone big on bouclé-inspired jackets for spring, complete with Chanel-esque gold buttons, for £55. At Zara, raw-edged jackets and cardigans are topping the bestseller list, while Mango’s £49.99 tweed take should come with a hoodwink warning. For the jeans, JW Anderson for Uniqlo’s straight-leg jeans in the “65 blue” colour and H&M’s washed baggy blue pair are a close match.
Ella Baynes, an insight executive at Savvy Marketing, says the cost of living crisis has shifted the definition of luxury. “In the midst of an affordability crisis, the simplistic look is aspirational but also in the realms of achievability,” she says. Julia Hobbs, British Vogue’s contributing senior fashion features editor, describes a Chanel jacket and jeans as “fashion’s version of the perfect pop song”.
