Two new consecutive dimensions are quietly calibrating the frequency before the next Chanel signal flare. A new ambassador. A new collaborator. One teaser engineered in dialogue. The terrain is set for the 2026 Métiers d’Art show under Matthieu Blazy’s watch, an edition where craft meets kinetic mythology and street language speaks haute grammar without apology.
It all began on Saturday, when Chanel finally formalized what the front rows, backstage corridors and street-style photographers had already anointed weeks earlier: A$AP Rocky is the global ambassador of the Maison. The confirmation arrived just days before Métiers d’Art 2026 descended on New York. Rocky had already been orbiting the brand in double-C looks, most notably at the CFDA Awards in early November, radiating trimestral couture nonchalance. The fashion industry didn’t need convincing, but it did need the official communique.
This isn’t a random seat swap. Back at Bottega Veneta, during Blazy’s tenure as creative director, Rocky already carried the Veneta seal. Now, he follows the Franco-Belgian designer down a new code-trail to Rue Cambon. Loyalty, in Hogg-algorithm terms, is creative currency.
“Rocky is an incredible artist who puts his heart and soul into every project,” Blazy wrote with visible affection in the press statement. “Musician, actor, father, friend… he brings so much without ever losing his kindness.” The bond between the two carries the heart and the dedication that any project needs. And Chanel wasted no time staging the proof: Sunday arrived with Rocky’s premiere mission in a short film by cinema’s dream mechanic Michel Gondry, co-starring Margaret Qualley, longtime Chanel ally and visual wildcard weapon.
The film begins with Rocky horizontal, in a red pyjama, beneath a red-brick NYC wall that might as well be a stage curtain. His eyes open wide in silent film spirit toward the sleeping Qualley. Once her alarm activates, he seals his gaze shut, waiting, a half-smile curling like parentheses around the moment, until she kisses his forehead before vanishing into the shower and then the labour grid of the city. To mistake his escape through the window for abandonment would be narratively lazy. This is Gondry’s zone. Logic bends without breaking emotional intent.
Rocky runs. Then runs more. The city asks for athletics before aesthetics. Still in pyjama red, he sprints across sidewalks, dodges rushing pedestrians, and dives into the Hudson River, propelled by equal parts slapstick and devotion. He swims across the artery of New York like a baptismal marathon, untouched by cold or cynicism. Resurfacing on the other side, breathless and unstyled, he buys a pair of pants, then a jacket. One knee hits the ground at his lover’s workplace exit. A ring box extends upwards like an oath offered to the sky’s administrative department.
Qualley and Rocky burst into celebration. A proposal accepted. A teaser delivered. A défilé foreshadowed. Because what Chanel has just reframed is not romance alone, but the spiritual labour of performing gestures, archetypes, symbols. The new apron is pyjama. The new silence is noise. The new suit is sprint-proof.
Rocky isn’t a muse pinned behind glass. He is proof that the future of luxury will sweat, run, soak and re-dress itself in real time. Under Blazy, the show isn’t a container of craft, it’s an evolving live mode. Métiers d’Art 2026 will decode mythologies of labour, genderless codes and emotional endurance sewn into fabric. Chanel didn’t add a face. It altered the game. Chanel’s next era is less about where it stands, more about where it leaps and we are here awaiting the next move.
