The life-giving lightness of Chanel, the renewed femininity of Armani Privé

Another day, another debut. "Everything is light because couture revolves around the body," says Matthieu Blazy at Chanel. It is his third fashion show for the historic maison, but his first haute couture one. The change of pace from the past is evident: a breath of fresh air carries away the grandeur and enlivens caressing thoughts and skin. Everything speaks the language of magic realism, of the search for a moment of suspension that is not evasion, but exploration of a more fragile and poetic dimension.

The solemn and usually cold spaces of the Grand Palais welcome a forest of giant mushrooms on a pale pink carpet, and the fashion show begins to the notes of Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty. "This collection," he continues, "was born from a reflection on what couture represents, namely a poetic exchange between the creator and the wearer: a dialogue that enhances the unique personality of each customer. Inspired by a Japanese haiku, I thought of the lightness of a bird resting for a moment on a mushroom and then flying away, proposing a pause of a few moments in an increasingly harsh world".

It's barely ten minutes, but you come out of the show enlivened. It is the lightness that strikes: impalpable, dense, the result of a process of sublimation of matter. It is a lightness by removal, not an insubstantial lightness.

The suits, the jeans, and even the bags are made of layers of muslin that like a watercolour X-ray reveal what lies beneath. As the releases follow one another, the material takes shape and the women, of all ages, beautiful with bare faces without a thread of make-up, mutate into a multi-coloured flock of birds or psychedelic mushrooms, right up to the bride covered in mother-of-pearl scales. But no, this is not fantastic zoology, an image experiment, the umpteenth dress rehearsal: Blazy thinks of clothes that can really be put on, in which wisdom is never exhibition. Whispering, today, is a countercultural choice, but preferring fragility to strength is a sign of great balance.

One can make a debut even at the age of seventy: this is the case of Silvana Armani who, after more than four decades spent at her uncle Giorgio's side, is now gaining the limelight on her own. Creative director of the Giorgio Armani women's lines, and thus also of Armani Privé, she is the only woman at the helm of a fashion house this couture season. The feminine look on the Armani code, which is rooted in an essential and vibrant purity, is immediately evident, all the more so because this is sparkling haute couture: no more hats, no more excessive stylisation, no more pulled-back hair, a new naturalness in the tones of jade, the auspicious stone to which the collection is dedicated.