Rome as a pinnacle. Chanel as confirmation.

“A pinnacle.” Bruno Pavlovsky, president of Chanel’s fashion activities, used this word to describe Rome.

Not an “iconic location,” not a “strategic destination” — the formulas corporate language reserves for transit cities. A pinnacle. In other words: a place one reaches only when one is ready.

The announcement of the Métiers d’Art 2027 collection, scheduled for December 2, 2026, with Matthieu Blazy presenting his first Italian runway show in the Capital, should be read starting from that very word.

Rome was chosen because it represents something that has become rare in contemporary luxury: a place that does not need to be constructed.

The city is no longer a passing stage. It has become a destination of choice.

The language of craftsmanship

Métiers d’Art is not an ordinary runway show. Since 2002, this collection has existed to celebrate the ateliers that preserve Chanel’s savoir-faire: embroiderers, feather workers, glovers — artisans invisible to the public, yet essential to the maison’s identity.

Each year, the chosen city is not merely a backdrop: it must embody, within its cultural DNA, the same respect for material, for time, for technique. It must be a place where craftsmanship is not folklore, but living memory.

Rome answers this requirement in an almost obvious, yet never banal, way. According to early reports, the collection will draw inspiration from the city’s architecture — that layering of matter and time that no other place in the world possesses with the same intensity.

Blazy is a designer who has built his aesthetic around the value of the invisible: cut, hand, texture. At Bottega Veneta, he redefined the idea of quiet luxury.

At Chanel, he seems intent on doing something similar: subtracting in order to reveal.

It is not the first time Chanel has chosen Rome. But it is the first time it has done so with this attitude: in 2015, Lagerfeld brought Paris into Cinecittà. Blazy is taking the opposite path. He is not bringing the maison into the city; he is coming to the city to listen to it.

Rome in the Global Luxury Calendar

Chanel’s arrival is part of a broader movement that would be a mistake to read as a series of disconnected events. In recent years, Rome has become the preferred stage for the maisons most attentive to the substance of luxury. Most recently, Valentino — with its show at Palazzo Barberini — entrusted Alessandro Michele with the task of reinterpreting the maison’s identity in the very city where that identity was born.

Before that, Dior chose the gardens of Villa Albani Torlonia for its Cruise 2026 show.

For years, major maisons pursued a global, nomadic vision of luxury, shaped by futuristic metropolises and scenographies consumed at the rapid pace of social media. Today, the opposite desire seems to be emerging: a return to places that possess memory, cultural depth, and an identity capable of giving weight to images. Rome offers all of this without needing to manufacture it.

The Value You Don’t See, but Can Read

For those observing Rome’s prime real estate market, these signals should be read carefully. The recurring presence of luxury maisons in a city does not affect only fashion or tourism. It reshapes the narrative of the city itself — and in high-end real estate, narrative is an integral part of value.

When Chanel chooses Rome, it constructs an imaginary. And in luxury, imaginaries become desirability. Desirability becomes demand. Demand shapes markets. Anyone purchasing property in Rome is also purchasing belonging to a place that the world of luxury has chosen as one of its privileged interlocutors.

Those who can read these transformations before they become obvious hold an advantage. Luxury maisons and prime real estate markets obey the same underlying logic: they seek places where value is real, never artificial. Places where quality does not depend on the trend of the moment, but on something older and more enduring.

It is through this same perspective that Krhome observes Rome: not simply as a market to monitor, but above all as a system of values to interpret. Because it is in cities capable of reflecting something true that authentic value finds its home.