There is something quietly radical about returning to where it all began. For his debut Chanel Cruise collection, Matthieu Blazy looks to the Atlantic coast, to Biarritz (where Gabrielle Chanel first cracked fashion open like a window in a stuffy room) and delivers a one-of-a-kind collection that takes us from the roaring 1920s to a fictional underwater world crowded with sequin-heavy mermaids.
We have been telling you for a while now: Chanel has cracked the code to everyone’s desires, finding the perfect balance between paying homage to Gabrielle and reinventing those codes on Blazy’s terms; yesterday was another testament to that. From Tilda Swinton, Nicole Kidman, Sofia Coppola, and Marion Cotillard to A$AP Rocky, everyone was in the Biarritz mood, distancing themselves from the usual Parisian landscape. In the coastal Basque city, Matthieu delivered a collection that felt effortless yet breathed craftsmanship.
The Cruise 2026 collection opens with Chanel’s 1926 little black dress: returned to its original archival sketch, it is read as the original ‘revenge dress’. It began not as luxury, but as the dress of women who worked (servants, shopgirls, convent sisters), until Chanel made grand ladies desperate to look like the people who served them.
Blazy’s collection moves the way its references do: fluidly and with great craft, across class lines and dress codes. Sailor silhouettes rub up against gowns, raffia skirts rustle into suiting, bathing suits exist alongside beaded knits, and swimming caps appear as both utilitarian objects and surrealist punctuation. This is workwear and grandeur sharing a changing room, which is exactly what Chanel has always been about.
The Basque stripe threads through everything like a quiet ideology, and it is here where Blazy is perhaps most himself. As a craftsman obsessed with material intelligence, the through-line of his work is found in the textures: fluid silks colliding with iconic tweed fabrics, flocks, beaded knits, and shimmering fish-scale colours. Feathers, meanwhile, migrated everywhere: across garments, accessories, and makeup, as if the collection had moulted. A leather dress with a feathered finish is paired with an XXL striped beach bag, the scale contrast tipping into something almost theatrical. A newspaper-ruffled dress with Gabrielle’s own headlines cut up and worn on the body — radical then, radical now.
Bags range from small valises to oversized striped beach paniers, with waterproof flaps appearing alongside carriers — the full spectrum of a woman in motion. Footwear straddles salon and shore, from Art Deco heels drawn from Biarritz’s geometric architecture to near-soleless heel caps that offer a barefoot experience without sacrificing structure. A kelly-green feather hat topped with a single rosette, bangles, and Chanel logo earrings sit alongside book-shaped locket necklaces draped beside pearl finishes, the latter also sent as the invitation for the show.
So now, if you read that Chanel has been named the hottest House of the moment, you understand why.
