“On va couper juste la.” Mathieu Blazy, Chanel’s creative director, points to top centre front of the dress, mimicking a slice on the fabric down the middle of the chest. “Romae allons y encore,” he says, beckoning me to do one more walk for him. After, he instructs his team to make another cut — this time to raise the hemline and make the mid part of the dress shorter. And, as if by a genie’s instinct, the women of the atelier reach for their tape measures, pins and needles, helping each other. In an instant, scissors glide through the fabric with surgical precision. Seams are hemmed and pins magically make their way in neatly formed lines running in horizontals and verticals like highway dividers across the garment, by delicate, well seasoned hands with decades of instinctive knowing.

The final touches of Look 31 for Chanel Couture S/S 2026 were coming into being.

On my first meeting with Blazy, Sam Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come bellowed from his fitting room playlist and so too did Gregory Porter’s Hey Laura. Goose pimples enveloped me on hearing these two songs during my first fitting. Days before I left Jamaica for Paris, Porter’s music was on auto replay on my Google device. I immediately recognised these two songs as a harbinger of what was to come — change with a flourish of fantasy.

And in the midst of the flutter of changes, a gut muscle, good pain-induced laughter erupted as I stood at attention, to enable the women to do their job. As Christine Mendy, head of the famed Chanel workshop, and her colleagues, including Paula Braz, Seconde Atelier Flou, insert pins and make cuts, I chatter excitedly about the requested changes. My attempt at communicating with Paula is met with a sharp, deadpan humorous, French rebuff. “Moi, je ne comprends rien,” (I don’t understand a thing you are saying) Paula retorts. Her expression, delivery, and my knowledge of French causes me to double over in laughter — its contagion felt by all in the room. The photographer and videographer rush over to capture the moment, relished by all, coming just at the right time to lighten the intense pressure of final preparations before Mathieu’s big couture debut. A moment of breath, light, camaraderie, and joy to ease everyone back into work and flow in the creative quest for near perfection.

With a change of shoes, a final walk ensues, and the look gets the 100 per cent approval from the creative director. There is strength, power, flou and flight in Look 31. Chanel’s groundbreaking little black dress made of wool, is cut mid-thigh and rests in its feminine power, moulded onto my body underneath a crêpe de laine, double-breasted jacket, making an exclamation of strength and accented by the only hint of colour on the look, buttons of green birds. They are both a complement and a connection to the details at the end of the look where there is flou — the soft movement that is ubiquitous throughout the entire collection — where total freedom is found, its pleats of organza de soie are shaped to resemble feathers and represent flight. French. Chic. Sexy. Look 31’s near-full body coverage reveals just enough skin — between the breasts and beneath the jacket where the legs are seen through the veil of silk — to amplify its appeal and authority.

After confirmation it was off to the Photo and Catalogue department. Jamaican and French humour met and once again there were more fireworks of laughter as the team enquired how come and why I was back for a fourth photoshoot of the look. Appropriate under the studio’s bright light as we were, after all, in the City of Lights.

The journey of the look in any collection is long and, in this case, for Blazy’s Couture debut at Chanel, every detail matters! What appears to be a simple and classic outfit with the season’s inspiration is so much more. The prep starts months in advance of the show and a look’s metamorphosis becomes a natural part of its journey and process. In fact, for my first fitting, I wore a skirt of a similar silhouette to the dress which had a hint of canary at the hem. But in an act of intuitive volition and creative genius, Blazy set that aside and the reimagined and re-crafted Look 31 rises like a phoenix, impeccably finished after hours of intense labour by some of Chanel’s finest white-caped craftswomen, to be what I presented in Paris on Tuesday, Janurary 27.

It is fortuitous for me to be called to Chanel and to wear Look 31. When I was, I reflected on what had touched me last year. I read several stories of women in fashion then, but Leana Nair’s was the most compelling. It was the context. The convergence of hers and Chanel’s was timely, particularly for me. It feels almost casual to say that I was going through a rough patch after my many experiences with death over 2024 into ‘25. I lost six loved ones. The pain flowed out of me thick and raw. I tried to be guarded about my emotions but I knew they showed up often and in doses of plenty. My family members can confirm. How they handled it all is still astounding to me! Mourning and pain manifest in so many ways and, in my case, only the ones close to me could describe how these emotions revealed themselves.

Like Look 31, I felt both transparent and opaque. For as much as I thought I held up a mirror to myself to check the honesty of what I was experiencing, the feelings weren’t always clear. And somehow I have come to realise what death did to me. It is an action that forces reckoning, seeking and finding, becoming… becoming better aware, a sharper listener, a keener observer, feeling every experience more intensely, for making them count, for transformation and being still. To allow and to let things flow.

For years I sought flow. Working feverishly day and night in my quest to find it, but the aftermath has taught me that I would have never found it where I was. I would need to fly, a necessity to rediscover and redefine my time above the earth, with great urgency. The Chanel calling epitomised all of this for me and more.

The guardian and dresser for Look 31 before its appearance to the world was Pierre Olivier Agostini. We talked pleasantly before the show began. I shared my interest and bucket list goal of pursuing a degree in fashion anthropology with him and I was not surprised to learn that he is senior research designer at Chanel. This is a critical role for the direction of the collection. He highlighted the importance of the creative process and understanding why women wear the clothes they choose: What is the personality of the character in the garments? What is the essence of the clothes themselves? Why would this woman pick this look and what is her narrative to the world for this choice?

Everything fell purposefully in place for me to make my first appearance for Chanel. The ethereal set with the soft blush coloured weeping willows, mushrooms — which the French have declared to be those of love — Champignons de l’amour, and if I could hazard too of death — de la mort. And the incredible music of Mary Costa’s I Wonder; Joan Baez’s Barbara Allen; Nelly Furtado’s Flames to Dust; the mash-up of The Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony with Oasis’s Wonderwall echoing flight, fantasy, love, tragedy, death, redemption, wonder, all in one. The experience was practical, intentional and all the elements reflected life and magnified the magic.

In all its high-fashion glory, Look 31 is accessible, wearable, transformable and fitting for women of any age. The look chose me, its number marking the 30-plus years that I have not been on an international runway; its meaning layered, loaded and perfectly paired with me. I was happy to be the body for its warm embrace in the cold Paris winter, under the dome of the Grand Palais. With final touches from Duffy’s team of hair stylists and the barely-there supernatural make-up from Lucia Pieroni’s, all hints of lint from the dress and jacket banished, we were set.

As the moment neared, my heart fluttered, backstage crew cued, deep breath, gaze fixed, shoulders back, stride ready. Bonjour Paris, bonjour tout le monde, je vous presente Look 31!

As with all works of art, Look 31 has a story — of richness, lightness, laughter, changes, echoes of history, and of Coco Chanel herself, whom my boy Cole calls “the scariest fashion designer in history”. Cole’s statement is open to all kinds of interpretation but, for me, Chanel was ‘kick ass’ and matchlessly before her time, which by all accounts would have made her scary to many!

Clothes have practical purposes and, naturally, in the case of couture, high style. Each look has its own story, memory, process, journey, and Look 31 of the 2026 Chanel Couture is melded into my psyche, my story, my history.

Gordon captivates in Look 31 at Chanel Couture. (Photo courtesy of Romae Gordon)

Attendees take in Romae Gordon in Look 31. (Photo courtesy of Romae Gordon)

Hemline deatils of Look 31 worn by Romae at the Chanel Couture SS 2026 (Photo courtesy of Romae Gordon)

Clean, next-to-nothing make-up, with hair swept back in a wispy chignon was all part of the allure at the Chanel Haute Couture 2026 show. (Photo courtesy of Romae Gordon)

Show set BTS — Chanel Couture SS26 (Photo courtesy of Romae Gordon)

Final make-up touches before the show (Photo courtesy of Romae Gordon)

Romae Gordon with Chanel Creative Director Mathieu Blazy, pre-show (Photo courtesy of Romae Gordon)

Show flow Chanel Couture SS 2026 (Photo courtesy of Romae Gordon)

Repping Jamaican stylists Cooyah and Sandra Kennedy en route to fittings for Chanel.(Photo courtesy of Romae Gordon)

Le Grand Palais, where the Chanel Couture SS 2026 was held in Paris.(Photo courtesy of Romae Gordon)

Gordon plants a kiss on research designer at Chanel Pierre Olivier Agostini, who dressed her for the collection.(Photo courtesy of Romae Gordon)

Models (from left) Sara Caballero, Luiza Peroti and Romae Gordon (Photo courtesy of Romae Gordon)

Romae Gordon (left) and Chanel Workshop Manager Christine Mendy.

Models (from left) Noemie Lenoir, Romae Gordon and Aluel Makuach backstage at Chanel Couture SS 2026 (Photo courtesy of Romae Gordon)

Romae Gordon and American rapper and record producer A$AP Rocky (Photo courtesy of Romae Gordon)