SEOUL — Chanel returned to Seoul for its first Métiers d’Art repeat show in the city since 2019, staging the Asia debut of Matthieu Blazy’s collection inside Centre Pompidou Hanwha Seoul ahead of the museum’s public opening on June 4.
Celebrity guests including Jennie, G-Dragon, Tilda Swinton and Marion Cotillard gathered Monday evening for the presentation, which was first unveiled at New York’s Bowery subway station last October.
Removed from the cinematic intensity of the New York subway setting, the collection took on a different character in Seoul. Inside the minimalist museum space, where works by Pablo Picasso and other major artists hang on the walls, the lighter-handed tweeds, fluid layering and eclectic interplay of prints and textures felt quieter, more intimate and more grounded in movement and wearability.
Chanel‘s repeat Métiers d’Art show at Centre Pompidou Hanwha.
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Swinton, who saw the New York premiere, said the Seoul presentation brought the clothes “into even sharper focus without the drama of the subway.”
“To see these women moving in a way you can move in Matthieu Blazy’s work — which is probably not that far off what it was like to walk in the clothes made by Gabrielle Chanel,” she told WWD after the show. “You’re liberated: you got somewhere to go, you go there. The clothes are very light, even the tweeds. They’re very movable. It’s a kind of freedom.”
Tilda Swinton attends the Chanel Métiers d’Art Show at Centre Pompidou Hanwha.
Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images for Chanel
Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion at Chanel, told WWD ahead of the event that Seoul was an “obvious” choice for the collection’s first international staging following New York — citing the city’s cultural influence as well as the house’s longstanding relationship with Korean clients.
Chanel has continued to deepen its presence in South Korea beyond runway events, including the recent opening of the house’s Shinsegae Heritage boutique in Seoul and a new Atelier dedicated to aftercare and restoration services.
“Both New York and Seoul are part of the influential cities of the world,” he said. “There are so many edgy things happening here — cinema, music, everything. It’s very inspiring for fashion in general, and for Chanel in particular.”
Cotillard, who was visiting South Korea for the first time, described coming to Seoul as “one of my dreams.”
“There’s something about the culture here. Obviously the music, the movies, the TV series that I love so much,” she said. “I really feel the strength of the culture.”
For G-Dragon, who has represented Chanel internationally for a decade, seeing the house stage the collection in Seoul felt especially meaningful. “It feels emotional and special for me to see the show again in Seoul,” he said.
G-Dragon attends the Chanel Métiers d’Art Show at Centre Pompidou Hanwha.
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That cultural resonance also underscored a broader conversation around Blazy’s debut Métiers d’Art collection, which revisited Chanel’s heritage codes through a more relaxed and playful lens while maintaining the artisanal savoir-faire central to the Métiers d’Art lineage.
Blackpink’s Jennie showed up in a number that revisited Chanel heritage codes.
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Swinton emphasized the importance of craftsmanship and human touch at a time when life increasingly moves at accelerated speed.
“It’s very important that we invest our energies and focus on what humans can do,” she said.
“When you have a strong heritage, you have even more freedom to design for tomorrow,” Pavlovsky said. “Matthieu has done that perfectly, to be totally immersed in this heritage, but be able to take what is interesting for the future. You don’t have to take everything. You have to take what is meaningful for you, for your perception, for your vision of fashion.”
The collection itself reflected that balance between heritage and reinvention. It retained Chanel signatures including bouclé tweeds, camellias and layered pearls, but Blazy approached them with a lighter and at times deliberately offbeat sensibility.
One standout reference revisited costumes originally designed by Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel for the 1931 Hollywood film “Tonight or Never,” including a vivid blue variation worn by G-Dragon at the Seoul event.
For G-Dragon, long considered as much a fashion figure as a musician, that interplay between clothing, identity and creative expression felt natural. “For me, music and fashion aren’t really separate categories,” G-Dragon said. “Creativity and style — they’re just different keywords.”
That cinematic sensibility also resonated with Cotillard.
“I loved everything; I even loved things I wouldn’t wear,” she said. “Because it tells a story: it was very cinematic, I saw all the characters, the stories of the women that came.”
“K-Pop Demon Hunters” director Maggie Kang likewise described fashion as an essential storytelling tool.
“Every choice that they make tells so much about a character,” Kang said. “Fashion actually is everything that we can kind of in terms of storytelling give the audience information about who the character is, what their interests are, what their history is.”
That emphasis on storytelling felt embedded in the collection itself. Even at its most cinematic, Blazy’s Métiers d’Art debut never lost sight of wearability: softened tweeds moved lightly on the body, layered pearls felt relaxed rather than ceremonial, and historical references were filtered through a distinctly contemporary ease.
Swinton, who recently wore the collection for a Korean editorial shoot, noted that the clothes never felt distant or inaccessible despite the level of craftsmanship involved.
“It’s very practical and very user-friendly,” she said. “And I think it’s incredibly important in a world in which connection is ever more precious and ever more elusive. It’s so important to make work that we can all enjoy.”
For Pavlovsky, those conversations around creativity, craftsmanship and transmission remain central not only to Métiers d’Art, but to Chanel itself.
“What we do at Chanel is a lot about transmission,” he said. “We want our client to be proud to say that would be for my daughter, my granddaughter, my son, whoever. But the idea is that it’s a treasure and that life will continue.”
As far as transmission goes, there’s no better way to keep up the high energy of Chanel’s major Seoul moment with an after party at the futuristic Dongdaemun Design Plaza, where guests and celebrities witnessed electrifying performances by Jennie of Blackpink and Peggy Gou.
