E.T., Phone Chanel! How Fashion’s Labels Got Personal Again

E.T., phone home! Or if you’re Steven Spielberg getting honored at the Museum of Modern Art’s annual Film Benefit, phone Chanel. On Thursday night, Spielberg offered a peek inside his bespoke Chanel tuxedo jacket, courtesy of Matthieu Blazy. Beneath the classic black tailoring was a galaxy-speckled lining, an embroidered playing card featuring E.T. on his bicycle, and a little patch reading “E.T. PHONE HOME.” Spielberg proudly flashed the details for all to see. Now that’s a statement lining.

It’s just the latest in a series of delightfully personal flourishes coming out of Blazy’s Chanel atelier. For his spring 2026 haute couture debut, the designer asked models to contribute something meaningful to their looks: a love letter, a birth date, a lucky symbol, an intimate thought. These were translated into exquisite embroideries by the house’s Lesage atelier, stitched into garments or onto little silk notes tucked inside delicate, translucent Chanel handbags. Model Stephanie Cavalli reportedly chose a letter from her husband. The sentiment was just as beautiful as the craftsmanship.

Blazy has continued to play with this notion of garments carrying memories. In the lead up to the spring 2027 Chanel show, models Bhavitha Mandava and Awar Odhiang discovered embroidered playing cards tucked inside jacket linings, depicting Gabrielle Chanel wearing looks the models themselves had previously walked down the runway in.

Couture clients can reportedly request this kind of personalization, too. And at October’s Academy Museum Gala, meanwhile, Hailey Bieber’s custom bubblegum-pink Chanel gown concealed another tender, handwritten detail: a note that featured the name of her son, Jack, accompanied by an arrow-pierced heart.

Leaving something deeply personal inside a garment is hardly new. Alexander McQueen famously made a rebellious art of it. While working for Romeo Gigli in Milan, the young designer reportedly left a rather less romantic message inside a jacket after being made to repeatedly redo its construction: “Fuck you, Romeo.” There are also the legendary tales—though disputed—of profanities hidden inside suits made for Prince Charles during his Savile Row apprenticeship. More poignantly, McQueen stitched locks of his own hair into the linings of his 1992 graduate collection, Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims, and later used them in his clothing labels.

But the clothing label itself has also long been a place for designers to express a little personality. Spend an afternoon rifling through the racks of any good thrift store and you’ll find a rag-tag assortment of embroidered crests, elaborate cursive fonts, wacky illustrations, and wonderfully earnest mottos from long-forgotten local dressmakers to grand houses. Even Burberry’s evolving labels offer a miniature history of the brand: from the old Burberrys name and the original Equestrian Knight emblem, introduced in 1901, to the pared-back modernist identity of recent years, and Daniel Lee’s revival of the knight in 2023. A label can do so, so much more than simply announce who made something.

A new generation of designers is rediscovering the joy of these small, characterful details. Take Sofia Testino, whose young eponymous label imagines a whole world of professions and their fictional, more off-kilter wardrobes. It’s been a joy to watch her brand identity develop through old-fashioned woven labels, with evolving colorful geometric borders, winged crests, and the tagline: “Style, Quality, Value.” There are shoeboxes bearing a cartoonish evolution from ape to woman in high heels. Testino has spoken about collecting vintage labels and old flight-attendant uniforms, mixing and matching elements to create her own distinctive identity. “I feel like labels and packaging and all these little details have been lost,” she recently told Welcome.jpeg. Where so many brands have settled for anonymous, identity-flattening minimalism, she’s building an entire universe down to the last stitch.

Elsewhere, London-based knitwear designer Oscar Ouyang has made a sweet little lamb a recurring signature, appearing on his whimsical knits and charming clothing labels. For her recent collaboration with Frankies Bikinis, Devon Lee Carlson joined forces with longtime friend Francesca Aiello to revisit treasured vintage pieces from their own wardrobes, complete with sweet pink co-branded labels decorated with a little dog and flowers. And in another corner of London, Sinéad O’Dwyer has been rethinking her brand identity as her customers grow up alongside her, with her newly imagined logo finding its way into the stitching on the back of her jeans.

For London-based demi-couture designer Ellie Misner, a clothing label can also serve as a little love letter commemorating a particularly special moment. Misner, who works on bespoke pieces, has taken to hand-embroidering her clients’s names above her own handwritten logo. For Raye, who fulfilled a long-held dream by headlining Reading and Leeds Festival, Misner stitched her name in burgundy thread into a crimson corseted gown. For Tems, whose Glastonbury main-stage performance marked another career milestone, it was a cobalt-blue signature sewn onto the inside of a midnight-blue ensemble. “My labels are my handwriting,” Misner tells Vogue, explaining that she handwrites the wearer’s name and then embroiders it, often choosing a thread that corresponds with the garment. For a performance that means so much to both artist and designer, it’s a way of marking the occasion, making the piece feel like more than just another custom commission. Misner likens the gesture to “a love note to their garment.” She adds: “I wish I could do it for everyone,” but the time-consuming process makes each one all the more special. These aren’t all bespoke gestures in the couture sense, but they share a certain spirit that insists on individuality, as well as the pleasure of details that one can keep entirely to oneself.

There’s something especially resonant about all this in an age of AI-generated images, algorithmically dictated taste, and increasingly impersonal consumption. Fashion, more and more, seems keen to remind us that there are actual people, with skills and emotions behind the clothes. At Chanel’s fall 2026 couture show, artist Joël Blanc painted the runway live in watercolors, capturing the spectacle in real time. And look at the new holiday campaigns from Prada, Dior, and Bottega Veneta, where all three have embraced the nostalgic charms of illustration and animation. Prada, in particular, has made a point of celebrating hand-drawn artistry, enlisting veteran animator John Pomeroy to conjure a whimsical winter wonderland populated by snow lynxes and mischievous mice.

In a world where almost anything can be reproduced, the idiosyncratic and intimate feel increasingly precious. The most meaningful thing about what we wear might be something nobody else can see.