The CHANEL style emerges from a longing for freedom. For his first CHANEL Cruise collection, Matthieu Blazy looks to Biarritz, where Gabrielle Chanel opened her couture house and presented herself her first collections in 1915. On the shores of the Atlantic, far from the salons of Paris, she invented a new style, one that was functional and liberated, elegant and dynamic, embracing movement and the freeing of the body.
The salon slips into the beach. The Cruise 2026/27 collection campaign plays with contrasts, bringing together interior and exterior, the formal and the relaxed, city and seaside. Photographed by Alec Soth, the campaign features the models Josephen Akuei, Stephanie Cavalli, Ruyu Chen, Chiara Dorward, Bhavitha Mandava, Bruna Souza and Anne Vyalitsyna on the sand at Biarritz’s Grande Plage. Film directed by Stuart Winecoff.
The collection revisits the Cruise codes while returning to the fundamentals of CHANEL. This is particularly true of the black dress, that this year celebrates the centenary of its iconic status and is now recast as the “revenge dress”. Originally a workwear or service uniform, it was reimagined by Gabrielle Chanel who transformed it into an object of desire for high society. Embraced by women everywhere—much like jeans— its widespread popularity ultimately blurred social distinctions.
Echoing the early iterations by Gabrielle Chanel, various takes on the style appear throughout the collection, led by a pared-back dress that opens the show. The bow at the back, a little-known signature of the legendary 1926 design, is transformed into an oversized purse and drifts throughout the collection upon other silhouettes. An architectural element of the garment, the double C runs throughout the collection. More than an ornament, it is a manifesto, it becomes part of the structure—the lines, volumes and details of each silhouette. It shapes and defines the lines of a knitted skirt or dress, an oversized tote, or a pair of pumps or loafers.
Freed from hierarchical codes, the collection draws directly from the way Gabrielle - Chanel, inspired by the city’s eclectic atmosphere, would bring together sartorial wardrobes of contrasting characters and functions. A new CHANEL vocabulary emerges. Cotton-canvas suits, as though weathered by salt and sun, or reinterpreted with a pareo spirit—one- or two-piece—are paired with silk ensembles and the overshirt, a new essential of the CHANEL wardrobe. A House classic, the sailor top is revisited with a trucker collar.
The Cruise 2026/27 collection is infused with nods to the Basque Country: its distinctive stripe, chili pepper jewellery, tamarisk motifs— Biarritz’s emblematic tree—all-over knit tops and coats depicting views of the coastline, and a colourful, fantastical marine world. This spirit takes shape in bather-inspired looks—a playsuit, a tweed jacket and a swimming cap—and in a dynamic, joyful seaside wardrobe, where a coral-cut dress embroidered with sequins and beads converses with buttons shaped like tiny fish and crabs.
This spirit of experimentation, so dear to Matthieu Blazy, is expressed in the abundance of materials: fluid silks, supple tweeds developed for warmer climates, dense flocks, beaded knits, iridescent sequins reminiscent of fish scales, petticoats edged with raffia, ultralight cashmeres and silk jerseys. Raffia maxi totes and classic lambskin bags, two-tone shoes with supple silhouettes, embellished with sequins, in smooth leather or crocodile-embossed suede: the accessories extend this exploration.
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