Chanel Is For The Boys (Again)

There was no 21st century runway debut more anticipated than Matthieu Blazy for Chanel, and last October, he set the tone with his opening look: a boxy cropped houndstooth jacket paired with low-slung, wide-fit trousers that, in the words of Chanel’s online shop, are “borrowed from the boys.” Elsewhere in the show, boyish proportions popped up in roomy blazers, crisp oversize shirts made in collaboration with Charvet, and a particularly enchanting leather trench coat. It was a runaway success. The opening look was worn by Dua Lipa, Jennie, Michelle Obama, and yes, Jacob Elordi, who wore the blazer with wide-leg white pants and sleek boat shoes, mixing runway fashion with his classic menswear tilt. In the five months since the debut show, Blazy has staged three more runways — and proved Chanel is for the boys again.

To say Blazy’s vision for Chanel has taken over the luxury zeitgeist would be an understatement. Fashion editors, influencers, and VICs alike have left boutique stockrooms barren after the release of his Spring/Summer 2026 collection, as his bags, shoes, and accessories have become the hero buys of the season and the red carpet. The maison dressed Jessie Buckley to win her Oscar and Teyana Taylor in her bid to win our awards-season power ranking. One recurring wish for Blazy’s tenure was the arrival of Chanel Homme — and while there have been no official menswear designs on the runways, the most stylish men in fashion have already claimed Chanel as their own.

This isn’t news for true Chanel heads. Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel relaxed suiting to make the skirt suit unfussy and body-obscuring (and therefore androgynous) for women almost a century ago. While the brand has never officially released clothing for the boys, previous longtime creative director Karl Lagerfeld had fun placing a rotating cast of male models on his runways (think: Sean O’Pry, Lucky Blue Smith). Pharrell made history starring in a 2017 Chanel campaign and walking the instant classic New York Metiers d’Art show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Temple of Dendur. Long associated with the house, he’s often seen in close-fitting collarless tweed jackets and Boy bags, and he even codesigned a collection with Lagerfeld.

In recent years, though, men across fashion, music, and film have increasingly taken to the double-C-covered ready-to-wear. Kendrick Lamar is a frequent collaborator, attending couture shows and the Met Gala with the house and later fronting an eyewear campaign shaped by his affinity for tweed and silk scarves. Timothée Chalamet’s Y2Chaotic promotion of A Complete Unknown saw him rock several crossbody Chanel bags. A$AP Rocky has similarly become a house fixture: He was named a brand ambassador, starred in a Michel Gondry-directed film alongside Margaret Qualley for the Métiers d’Art show staged in a New York subway station, and sat front row at Blazy’s debut couture runway in January in a leather trench coat and green crocodile bag. His limitless career — acting, rapping, baby-fathering — mirrors the way Blazy leaps across disciplines and eras, making him an ideal face of the brand and a kind of Chanel Homme testing ground.

Meanwhile, Elordi has also been seen sporting a silly little Chanel purse, a Charvet collaboration button-down shirt for a late-night appearance, and a red beaded sweater for Wuthering Heights press — making him one of the most convincing arguments yet for Blazy’s vision of everyday Chanel.

That shift hasn’t gone unnoticed by critics, either. “Those early looks from Matthieu’s first collection broached a lens of Chanel that felt much more ambiguous in terms of gender,” says Luke Meagher, fashion critic and founder of HauteLeMode. “Yes, it was women wearing them on the runway, but seeing them, I thought for the first time ever, ‘Oh, I could wear that in my everyday life.’ There was almost an approachability to the cut and use of simple houndstooth or tweeds that make the blazers and trousers feel universal, rather than inherently cut to fit a woman’s body.”

Blazy’s vision of femininity also extends to the men who aren’t afraid to experiment. Harry Styles and Pedro Pascal have both leaned into Chanel’s playful tailoring: Styles wore a pinstripe banker suit to his first major awards show in years, then a collarless leopard-print jacket with silver piping to a Saturday Night Live afterparty, paired with a white T-shirt and blue jeans. Pascal sported a custom white shirt and black tuxedo pants with a massive floral brooch inspired by runway earrings to the Oscars. It was the best possible advertisement for Blazy’s Chanel fitting into one’s everyday life: casual yet undeniably bougie, trend-aware yet timeless.

The genderless way Blazy designs allows everybody to see themselves in it, regardless of identity. Sure, the men who have dipped their toe into the Chanel-verse are risk-takers with their fashion (here’s hoping Alexander Skarsgård wears custom Chanel at Cannes this year), but they are also ushering in a new era in fashion where the lines between menswear and womenswear have officially dissolved. Chanel Homme doesn’t need to technically be a thing; it’s already here thanks to shifts in menswear that our favorite style legends have made a reality. Blazy has successfully created an environment where more than one customer is welcome to the proverbial Chanel table. The ladies eat first, to be sure, but the men can pull up a chair, too.