Whether Matthieu Blazy’s plans for Chanel will include the launch of menswear has become a central topic of the fashion conversation online. Chalk that up to Kendrick Lamar being announced as an ambassador for Chanel eyewear, and to Timothée Chalamet and Jacob Elordi carrying tiny Chanel handbags over the last year. Chalamet, of course, is a Chanel fragrance face, and Elordi became one of Bottega Veneta’s first-ever ambassadors during Blazy’s tenure—could he follow the designer to Chanel?

Prompting further speculation, the house dressed stylist Ib Kamara and model and photographer Malick Bodian at the 2025 Met Gala. But here’s the thing—Chanel, during its Karl Lagerfeld years, often included some menswear here and there. It didn’t need to be in stores to prompt the fanaticism of male celebrities, most famously Pharrell Williams, who walked Lagerfeld’s runways twice.

Lagerfeld utilized the likes of Brad Kroenig (and eventually his son Hudson), Jake Davies, Baptiste Giabiconi, and Sébastien Jondeau, among others as gorgeous extras to further tease out the storylines and contexts of his runways. They were pilots and fur-clad snowmen, couture grooms and companions, and, in some cases, Lagerfeld stand-ins wearing replicas of his famous skinny suit.

Here, in anticipation of the spring 2026 menswear collections, we’ve collected our favorite men’s looks from the 100-plus Lagerfeld put on the runway over the course of his tenure at Chanel. The earliest appearance features a couple of super-buff dudes carrying supermodels models down the catwalk for spring 1995, though the real menswear action chez Chanel starts in the 2000s and continues through his last couple of shows. Earlier this year, Chanel CEO Leena Nair said that the label has no plans for menswear: “It’s going to be the same answer: No, we are not planning to enter men’s. But I’m very happy when I see men all over the world wearing Chanel,” she said.

That’s the thing—what has always made men in Chanel cool and, frankly, attractive is that they are wearing womenswear. It works because it isn’t menswear, it’s Chanel.