Nicole Kidman, Zendaya and hovering cars see Paris Fashion Week go out on a high

Coco Chanel designed her postwar suit so women could move. Seven decades later, designer Matthieu Blazy has made it stretch. Suits in a new "smocked tweed" anchored Blazy's spring-summer 2027 collection for Chanel, shown Monday night at the Grand Palais beneath a flock of illuminated birds as Nicole Kidman, Dua Lipa and Pedro Pascal watched from the front row.

The fabric gives like sportswear, but the idea is old. Chanel built its name by changing how women dressed, and a year after his debut as its designer, Blazy is applying that principle to the house's own uniform. Louis Vuitton closed Paris Fashion Week on Tuesday evening with Zendaya in the audience and car sculptures hovering above the runway at the Louvre Museum. It was the final major show of a spring runway season that began in New York last month.

Blazy came from Bottega Veneta to succeed the longtime right hand of Karl Lagerfeld, Virginie Viard, who took over after Lagerfeld's death in 2019. Viard's tenure brought record sales. Blazy's has brought back surprise. He loosens the house's symbols rather than replacing them. Tweed stretches. Jackets go on over bare skin. Quilted bags slouch. Longtime clients still recognize the codes; newer ones are invited to play with them.

This season, he staged Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel's life as an escape: from the corsets and stiff tailoring of her Edwardian youth, through the men's clothes she borrowed, to the easy suits of her postwar comeback. "It's about the women within a woman," Blazy said. Kidman, who attended with her daughter Faith Margaret, also supplied recorded readings from Virginia Woolf's "Orlando," whose protagonist lives across centuries and changes identity.

Nicole Kidman poses upon arrival at the Chanel Womenswear Spring Summer 2027 collection presented in Paris, France, on Monday. AP

Kidman won an Oscar for portraying Woolf in "The Hours." Kidman, Lipa, Pascal and Alexa Demie sang along to a-ha's "Take On Me," and the show ended with Britney Spears' "Gimme More." Edwardian dress lingered in traces of boning, peplums and ruffled collars. Men's formal wear was cut down into raw-edged vests and narrow skirt suits. A pearl-stitched corset top worn with plain black trousers complicated the story of escape, making constraint part of the appeal. The most beautiful pieces were dresses of layered, printed silk that tracked the sky from morning to nightfall, and 1930s-style sequined or beaded gowns that Chanel described as having the ease of a T-shirt.

Not everything landed. Pattern-on-pattern outfits and ballet tutus tipped into costume, and at 83 looks, the argument sometimes sprawled. The birds made it more gracefully: swallows perched on buttons and jewelry, and a birdcage evening bag came with its birds already flown. Model Dyanira Hurbuscher walked first and last, both times carrying the founder's own 2.55 handbag from the house archives - freedom, with the past firmly in hand. Louis Vuitton offered a softer vision of the future - and another argument for giving the body room to move.

Nicolas Ghesquière, known for sculpted, futuristic silhouettes, loosened things up with gauzy shift dresses, cardigans, short jackets and soft tailoring. Delicate fabrics rippled as models walked, and slim trousers incorporated sheer mesh panels. His taste for science fiction remained intact. An asphalt runway crossed the Louvre's Cour Carrée beneath dozens of wedge-shaped concept cars raised on poles and decorated in the house's Damier checkerboard pattern. Silver lamé gave some shift dresses a metallic flash.

US actress and singer Zendaya poses as she arrives ahead of the Louis Vuitton Women's Spring/Summer 2027 collection fashion show as part of the Paris Fashion Week, in Paris on Tuesday. AFP

Zendaya, a house ambassador, brought some informality to the front row, pairing jeans with the ruffled white lace jacket that she had worn to the Paris premiere of "The Odyssey." Emma Stone, Saoirse Ronan, Blackpink's Lisa, Sophie Turner and Catherine Deneuve also attended. Across Paris, designers made similar moves: mixing formal clothes with sportswear, bringing lingerie into public view and making elaborate decoration feel lighter.

Miu Miu worked the same seam from the opposite side, dressing sportswear up. Miuccia Prada paired pleated check skirts and blazers with running shorts and track tops. Shoelaces became belts, and guests watched from gym-style bleachers. Olivia Colman modeled a black leather skirt suit, joining Jamie Bell and Emma Corrin on the runway.

Sacai's Chitose Abe, back on the women's runway after a season away, set tough clothes in motion. Biker leathers broke into swinging fringe, silk tassels crowned military jackets, and prints of beads and rhinestones under sheer layers gave the look of embellishment without the weight. She finished by running to hug Pharrell Williams. At Valentino, plain satin bustiers and knee-length skirts offered a more intimate kind of formality.

Showing at the Sainte-Geneviève Library, Alessandro Michele compared unworn clothes with unread books in his notes: both "still speak to us of the lives we could have lived." Alexander Skarsgård brought Icelandic sagas to donate. Elie Saab took lingerie in a more nostalgic direction. Beaded slips and lace bralettes recalled the early 2000s, when Halle Berry won her Oscar in one of his gowns. Paris and Nicky Hilton sat in the front row.

Victoria Beckham's pleated dresses hung from jewelry chains, taffeta raincoats looked weightless and wedge sandals had their heels hollowed out. As with Blazy's stretch tweed, the ambition was to make elaborate clothes feel easy to wear.

Agence France-Presse