Chanel Goes Underground: Matthieu Blazy's Métiers d'Arts turns the Bowery into a Runway

When on December 2nd Chanel invited guests to descend into a silent, disused stretch of Manhattan’s Bowery subway station, the shock effect was immediate: the house’s iconography, tweed, camellias, pearls and the double C, were landing somewhere raw, civic and unexpectedly intimate, a very different scenario compared to their usual runways. The platform, repainted and reheated with warm lighting, became a stage not for aristocratic fantasy but for the kinetic, layered reality of New York City life. Under Matthieu Blazy, Chanel is consciously recasting how its clothes meet modern bodies and public spaces, and this fashion show was the turning point for the brand’s new and innovative approach.

Location as Narrative

Part of what made the show feel cinematic was the casting and choreography. Models boarded staged train cars and stepped onto the platform as if arriving on a commute. Their movement was choreographed to mimic the rhythm of transient encounters. This performative approach underscored Blazy’s concept of “couture in motion”. The show’s dramaturgy also created the perfect narrative hook for the model who opened it, a young woman whose real-life discovery echoed the very premise of the show. 

Bhavitha Mandava, a 25-year-old Hyderabad-born model, found herself at the center of this exact story. Reported to have been scouted while walking in a New York City subway only weeks before the season, Mandava opened the Métiers d’Art runway, stepping from a train into a look that married utilitarian ease with house refinement. Her backstory and rapid ascent, from being noticed on a platform to opening a Chanel show, became an emotionally resonant narrative for the audience and the press. For many, her presence crystallized Blazy’s democratic impulse that glamour can be found, and elevated, in the most remote spaces that we all traverse. 

What It Means for the Future

This Métiers d’Art felt less like a detour and more like a roadmap. By staging couture in a subway, Chanel signaled a willingness to engage with the literal and symbolic intersections of public life and luxury. Blazy’s designs, genuine, sometimes playful, and often subversive, suggest a new spirit for testing how far its traditions can stretch without snapping back into mere nostalgia. The show offers a lesson in narrative cohesion: location, casting, craftsmanship and commerce can be woven together to produce a story that feels both of-the-moment and structurally thoughtful. 

The station, for one night, became living proof that couture’s future may be less about distance from life and exclusivity and more about how beautifully it can be stitched back into it. 

---

By Giulia Favilli