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Lauren Sherman: Let’s start with Matthieu’s first ready-to-wear collection. What was your initial reaction?

Bryanboy: Well, the thing about when you watch a show is you don’t have an idea of how it’s going to look at the boutique. Whenever we watch fashion shows, we’re kind of blinded by the whole aura, by the whole atmosphere. You go there, the set is incredible, you watch the show, you’re 6 feet away from models. Then you go to the re-see, you see all the stuff—it’s wonderful. But when you go to the boutiques five months later and see everything up close? The show was beautiful, but it was even more enchanting in real life. I went to the boutique on March 4, the day before it launched, for a special preview. They weren’t even selling it, they wouldn’t even let us buy anything, but they were able to place some things on hold. What I saw was so different from what I felt at the show. It was incredibly modern.

As a fashion editor, what do you think about the silhouette he’s proposing? Broad shoulder, double-breasted in many cases, very boxy, and so much drop-waist. A drop waist hasn’t been popular since the 1990s.

Chanel will never be that conceptual brand, never. Directional, yes. But everything Matthieu does is tangible, it’s real, it’s deliberate. What I love about all the silhouettes he’s put out there is that they’re freeing. He really captured the essence of what Gabrielle did to free women. These are clothes you can wear day-to-day. You can eat, you can drink, you can party, you can dance. Even the way those silhouettes move, everything under the knee has a certain flow and movement. It’s going to work. There’s always discussion online that only tall people can do that, but you don’t know how it’s going to translate at the boutique, when they do it commercially. From an editorial perspective, he does push things a little, you can tell. But it’s not extreme. He’s not creating and selling only ideas, which a lot of designers do now. When they design collections, it’s all about pushing ideas.

We don’t want to sound completely deranged, but the pricing was more… “reasonable” is not the right word.

The right word might be “justified.”

In M.B.A. terms, the price-value equation was there. If you looked at a Chanel jacket from 1990 and adjusted for inflation, the price we paid for our jackets was roughly the price they cost in 1990. And I’m okay with that.

I was really pleasantly surprised with the pricing, especially having been buying Chanel jackets for 15 years. With Matthieu, the mens-y blazers, the cropped blazers, are like, $6,400–$7,000, and they’ve really improved the quality. The fabric is incredible, the chains, the little buttons, the details, the lining—compared to what’s out there in the market, you’re getting so much.

I was thinking about what Bruno Pavlovsky, Chanel’s president of fashion, said a couple of years ago about bags. He admitted that some of the bags got too expensive and they needed to be more careful about pricing. How do you feel about all these people online who are constantly going on about bag quality, clothing quality?

I’d find it more credible if it comes from actual consumers with experience with a product. I love, for example, Tanner Leatherstein. He dissects product, and most of the time he’s valid. But where I disagree is that value and worth are subjective. I have bags that are 13 euros from a flea market in Thailand, that are probably like 25 years old, and still around. I have Prada bags and Gucci bags I don’t use, and the quality is also incredible. My Louis Vuitton Speedy from 1997 is still in great condition. There are so many factors at play when it comes to so-called quality. It’s how you treat your item, how you use your item.

The thing that drives me the most crazy is when people are talking about high street fashion quality going downhill—because it’s actually really improved. Zara is incredibly high-quality, and especially for what you get for your money.

I also have a lot of designer pieces where, after two washes, it’s like, questionable. It all depends on the item, and you’re right, nothing is perfect.

What did you think of the way the shoes and bags came together? Shoes are such a great growth business for so many luxury brands.

What he did is definitely genius. You already have the core classics of Chanel: the slingbacks, the cap toe, all these codes, the loafers. What he did was broaden them without doing anything radical. For example, the square-toed shoes, just change the cap toe from round and pointy into a square shape. A simple design element, upgraded. How come no one thought of that?

What I love about Matthieu is that he’s super brainy, but he also understands he needs to be really clear about it, and it needs to be emotional. Ending the shows with these very nostalgic songs is such a clear example. When we look back on his career, a lot of it’s going to be about meditations on childhood and growing up and coming of age. There’s something so simple about what he does, and then also so deep. That’s why we’re all hooked.

When I was growing up, I would watch Galliano’s Dior shows, and they were so meaningful to me. I’d know the music, the models, you really connect to the show and to the collection because of all these factors at play. With Matthieu, he’s only had four shows in the past six months, and I sometimes watch the Chanel shows in the background just to listen to the music, to feel it. You really feel connected to the shows. There are very few shows today that really make you feel emotionally invested and connected.

I talked to some people who work in the stores in the U.S. who were worried. Then, he blew it out of the water. They had so much demand, they all underbought because they weren’t sure. Now, the old client is totally on board.

We all underestimated the impact of that first show. It’s unprecedented. We really did. Even the clients both new and old underestimated that. But with the ready-to-wear second show, the Autumn/Winter collection, it felt like he expanded on his first show and brought in even more propositions. There are so many new things for Chanel: the blousons, the bomber jackets, the chain mail jackets, the overshorts. I can’t even imagine the sampling that he did, there must have been thousands of fabrics. It’s going to be a success.

The other day, you said to me, I haven’t seen a frenzy like this since Alessandro at Gucci. Do you think Chanel is an anomaly, or is it an indication that luxury as a whole is moving in the right direction? Is Chanel an island, Hermès an island, and everyone else is on the mainland?

People buy fashion because they want to be happy. They want to look good, feel good, feel better about themselves. It’s therapy. Chanel somehow found the recipe: great technician, great designer, fabulous shows, incredible casting of all ages and all races, the narratives behind it, the campaigns of joy and happiness. All of these factors come into play, well thought-out, well researched. I don’t think it’s deliberate, I don’t think it’s forced. The amount of user-generated content that money can never buy. A big brand can throw millions and billions into marketing and never pay for this, because at the end of the day, Chanel did what a lot of brands couldn’t do: They connected to people’s hearts.

Bryan, they really did.

Until Monday,
Lauren

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