Sometimes it takes a couple of seasons for a designer to find their feet at a new house, but Matthieu Blazy was right out of the gate at Chanel. He’s made it look easy – effortless, even – like it’s something he was born to do. He’s effectively set a new benchmark for a debut year at a house, one that other designers can only aspire to match.

He’s also pulling off something genuinely difficult (besides carrying the creative weight of a £28 billion brand on his shoulders, of course). He’s managing to respect a house with a formidable history while still allowing himself to have fun. He’s being innovative (a near-impossible feat, or at least a rare one in today’s industry), and creating work that feels truly joyful and uplifting, without being tone deaf to the current state of the world. Part of this has to do with his posture, which isn’t laden with irony like some of his contemporaries, but instead carries a degree of earnestness; he’s sincere without being cloying, creating beautiful clothes that inspire, yes, that word again, joy.

Another thing I love about Blazy is how much he clearly loves women. In an epidemic of male designers holding fashion’s top positions, he approaches his collections with a sense of care and respect, not treating women as canvases for his own grand artistic statements, but designing with their comfort and lifestyles in mind – much like Coco Chanel. His casting reflects this: models of varying ages and, to an extent, sizes (not all skeletal, at least – another rarity in today’s industry) appear on his runways. Speaking to Dazed after the show, director and friend of the house, Sofia Coppola, put it simply: “Matthieu loves women and I love how he shows that.”

That attitude carries through behind the scenes. At the afterparty, a model from the show in Biarritz said that beforehand, Blazy had been checking in on everyone, making sure they were OK, encouraging them to enjoy the runway. You could feel that energy – the warmth, the looseness – on the catwalk. It clearly comes from the top. Someone else who worked on the show said, on the flight back to London, that it was the nicest team she’d ever worked with.

But enough of that. Onto the clothes.

Blazy’s first Chanel Cruise show, the reason for this article, took place in Biarritz, a bougie beach resort in the south of France near the Spanish border. The choice was significant: it’s where Coco Chanel opened her first couture house, a site the brand is now in the process of acquiring and restoring. The setting fed directly into the collection. Seaside tropes ran throughout – shell details, coral patterns, beachwear silhouettes, beaded flap bags embroidered with fish. Two closing looks offered Blazy’s take on the mermaid. Naturally, it was an all-star cast, with our favourite runway girls hitting the catwalk: Alex, Anok, Awar, Bhavitha, Mona, et al, while Chanel muses and ambassadors Nicole Kidman, A$AP Rocky, Michaela Coel, and Tilda Swinton sat front row.

Up close the next day, the craftsmanship landed harder. Tiny beaded chillies on the lapel of a silk blouse. A dress lining, revealed through a lattice of knotted fabric, printed with newspaper cuttings about Chanel’s Biarritz house from 1915. Shells crocheted and appliquéd onto hems. I could go on.

Chanel could easily veer into pretension – and it would have every right to – but Blazy sidesteps that. You see it in the soundtracks: Lady Gaga at his last show; Kylie Minogue at this one, spliced with soundbites from Leonardo DiCaprio in The Beach, and again at the afterparty, where A$AP Rocky’s performance was followed by a DJ who delivered an assortment of crowd-pleasers from ABBA, Queen, and Florence and the Machine. It had the joy of a wedding or a blow-out birthday bash.

For all its position at the top of the luxury hierarchy, and its eye-watering prices, this version of Chanel feels unusually open. As open as a brand like this can be, anyway. And it’s paying off already – according to Lyst’s quarterly rankings, Chanel is officially the hottest fashion brand in the world right now.

A wise man (my boss) told me recently that fashion is Europe’s Hollywood, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. If that’s true, then Chanel under Blazy has the popular appeal of a major studio blockbuster, with the creative sensibility of niche arthouse flick. Another impossible balance that he’s pulling off with apparent ease.