Matthieu Blazy graduated from La Cambre in Brussels, and after internships at Nicolas Ghesquière’s Balenciaga and John Galliano, he began his fashion career as a menswear designer for Raf Simons, joining the studio in 2007.

The defining apprenticeship ran in two acts under the same mentor, first at Raf Simons through 2011, then alongside Pieter Mulier on the New York team Simons assembled at Calvin Klein, where from 2016 to 2019 Blazy worked as design director on the men’s and women’s collections.

The thesis that emerges across this résumé is a sleight-of-hand approach to materials and tailoring, leather rendered as flannel, nubuck printed to read as denim, the weight of a coat sitting against the surface of something that looks like another fabric entirely.

Between the two Simons chapters, in November 2014 Blazy joined Phoebe Philo’s team as senior designer at Celine working on pre-collections, then logged four years at Maison Margiela where he oversaw the Artisanal couture line, including the Ye crystal-encrusted mask Kanye West wore on the 2013 Yeezus tour.

In 2020 he became design director of ready-to-wear at Bottega Veneta, and in November 2021 was appointed creative director, succeeding Daniel Lee.

The fall-winter 2022 debut opened with a white tank top and a pair of jeans, the trousers actually constructed from a printed, supple nubuck made to look like denim, followed by leather circle skirts in purple, butter yellow and bone white, fringe-trimmed, alongside the Kalimero shoulder bag and the intrecciato Andiamo, work that placed him in conversation with Phoebe Philo’s Celine and the post-Helmut Lang lineage of pragmatic luxury.

Under his leadership, Bottega Veneta reported a 6 percent jump in comparable revenue in 2024, significantly outperforming the wider luxury market, before his appointment as creative director of Chanel, a role he officially began in April 2025.

On 12 December 2024, Blazy was named Artistic Director of Fashion Collections at Chanel, succeeding Virginie Viard, and stands as the first external designer to lead the house since Karl Lagerfeld.

The spring-summer 2026 debut at the Grand Palais opened on a simple, square-shouldered gray trouser suit beneath a set of suspended planets, and reactivated house codes through a 2.55 bag crashed, crushed and cherished with its traditional burgundy leather lining exposed, crumpled camellias integral to knitted silk suits, and frayed tweeds quietly advanced to the present, paired with shirting made by Coco’s favourite, Charvet.

The Chanel chapter extends the argument of the résumé, a designer trained in the studios of Simons and Philo turning the codes of a heritage house into garments where craft surfaces in the seam, the lining, and the texture of the cloth.