CHANEL President of Fashion says a new designer will not magically fix problems
Posted On October 30, 2025
CPP-LUXURY
While many indicate that a new designer will magically fix their problems,
CHANEL‘s President of Fashion, Bruno Pavlovski says in an interview to Le Figaro that one cannot design his way out of a supply chain crisis.
The Karl system is dead.
Pavlovsky admits they were
“enchaining collections without time to think about industrialization.” Now Matthieu Blazy has them planning Métiers d’art while delivering ready-to-wear. Revolutionary? No. Basic operational excellence? Yes.
The post-COVID gold rush made everyone lazy. Open stores everywhere, slap a logo on it, charge EUR 5000. Except people aren’t stupid. They stopped coming to boutiques not because of “luxury fatigue”—they have less money, weaker currencies, and better things to do than buy your 47th variation of the same bag.
Chanel grew in 2025 while others crashed. Not only because of Blazy’s arrival. Because they never stopped being Chanel. The industry wants a creative savior. Pavlovsky’s telling you to fix your operations.
Bruno Pavlovsky: "The renewal brought by Matthieu Blazy will allow Chanel to shine for the next twenty years."
EXCLUSIVE - The president of the fashion activities, who started under the reign of Karl Lagerfeld, looks back on the extent of the changes made in the house on rue Cambon since the arrival of its new artistic director.
By
Hélène Guillaume FIGARO
October 7, 2025
Matthieu Blazy 's first collection , the reorganization of the house, the role of an artistic director and the economic context… A few hours before the first show of its new designer,
Bruno Pavlovsky unveiled the
new Chanel era .
Bruno Pavlovsky - I find Matthieu's interpretation of the house and Mademoiselle Chanel very interesting. We're still at Chanel, but a slightly different Chanel. He cultivates the same approach to the materials that form our foundation, but he twists them to create this unique look. This first collection contains many avenues that Matthieu has already envisioned exploring for future seasons. In recent years, we've tended to confine ourselves to certain codes; the objective of this first show was to revitalize the brand's fundamentals, to give them a new creative dimension.
What has changed in the organization of the house since Matthieu Blazy's arrival?
He truly opened our eyes to the need for anticipation and planning. We were still operating under Karl Lagerfeld's system, churning out collections without sometimes having the time to consider the industrialization of the pieces that would be shown on the runway.
Matthieu begins his research and imagines his silhouettes much earlier, and he's able to provide direction to the studio and workshops quite early on. Over the past six months, we've implemented a new organizational structure so that our teams and manufacturers can work further in advance, and we're already reaping the rewards: following the ready-to-wear show, Matthieu finished the Coco Beach collection; the Métiers d'Art collection, which will be shown in early December, is already well underway; the January haute couture collection is launched, and we're even starting to discuss the next ready-to-wear collection for March. It's a new way of working that gives us greater flexibility and efficiency in delivering products to stores.
This is the best guarantee for Chanel to continue to be a market leader and what will allow the brand to shine for the next twenty years.
Do you think this creative renewal at the helm of many houses will allow the luxury industry to emerge from the current crisis?
Unfortunately, I doubt that will be enough. Certainly, for houses like Chanel, the "spark" created by an artistic director is fundamental to positioning the brand image. But to be able to generate several billion in revenue, extremely robust organizations are needed to maximize this creative impulse. Manufacturing, deliveries, and even store management are all separate issues.
The role of an artistic director has a beginning and an end; the all-powerful artistic director is not, in my opinion, a good idea for brands. As for the economic context,
Chanel had a better year in 2025 than predicted, and we have, in fact, returned to growth.
The slowdown in the sector is mainly linked to the Chinese market. Some have spoken of consumer fatigue with luxury.
I believe that people are coming to the stores less often because they have less money due to the economic situation in their country or because their currency is weakening. That said,
it's true that the sector, which experienced three years of very strong growth post-Covid, has sometimes lacked ambition in its creative vision and execution. We can proclaim that everything is fine everywhere, we can open boutiques and pop-up stores left and right, but if we rest on our laurels and become commonplace,
if we fail to inspire enough, customers will lose interest.
I hope that this new generation, to which Matthieu belongs, will allow us to rethink all of this.
BLazy quotes in figaro post show:
“ My first day at Chanel was a wonderful day, a joyful day where I met everyone… Then I went to see the heritage collection. And there, I felt overwhelmed. I didn’t know where to begin. It was too beautiful. There were too many stories. I was stuck ,” Matthieu Blazy began telling journalists shortly after his show.
“So I decided to stop looking at her work and instead read about her life. And, in a book from the 1960s, there was this photo of Gabrielle Chanel during her relationship with Boy Capel, where she’s wearing a man’s shirt. I looked into where that shirt came from and discovered it was a Charvet , that Chanel and Boy were Charvet clients. This discovery allowed me to unlock the first door.” The starting point for this collection is the paradox of Gabrielle Chanel, who, by day, wears this men's garment, which makes her equal to the man she loves, and, by night, becomes a great seductress who fully embraces her femininity. LOL
“ inspired by a 1964 suit with strange stripes by Chanel, but which could have been made from a fabric from South America, Africa, or Asia. And which refers to the fact that the house is French, but the company is international and has clients from all walks of life .”
"Oddly enough, I was never anxious while I was at work. The pressure started as soon as I got home. But I think the most stressed person in this room isn't me, it's my mother."
make faster .....have collection ready ahead etc ......
