Biarritz meets the imagination of Matthieu Blazy in the Chanel Cruise 2027 collection
Matthieu Blazy seems to understand that fashion doesn’t have to choose between rigor and joy. In his second collection as Chanel’s creative director, Blazy makes a spirited case for clothes that are exquisitely made, but still with a sense of lightness and play.
The collection for Chanel Cruise 2027, titled “Sous le Salon, la Plage,” or “Below the Salon Lies the Beach,” was presented in Biarritz, the storied resort town perched on France’s Basque Coast. The town has welcomed European royalty since the 1800s, and where, crucially, Gabrielle Chanel opened her very first couture house.
Blazy pins his creativity on the location, turning over its history and borrowing from its textures, to build a bubbly collection that bewitched its audience at the debut, among them Nicole Kidman, Tilda Swinton, Marion Cotillard, and ASAP Rocky.
For Chanel Cruise 2027, the designer demonstrated a firm grasp of the house’s history, even as the collection leaned into a freer, effervescent expression of the house’s manifesto.
Beachwear meets bouclé
Blazy opened with homage to Gabriel Chanel’s iconic little black dress. The opening look revitalized its silhouette with bright red seashell earcuffs and flat loafers, grounded in the house’s origins but now reintroduced for the ocean breeze. From there, the collection continued with confident breadth. The house’s interlocked “C” motif was liberated from mere branding, recast as a graphic wave appearing in necklines, cutouts, and the arcs of dresses, one rendered in punchy magenta.
The image of Biarritz itself was also literally woven into the clothing, from a tweed coat that depicted the coastline in the style of a vintage travel postcard, paired with a jacquard wool polo that continued the scene. Other looks showed images of Biarritz depicted in skirts.
Newspaper also came into the imagery, from a newspaper-print skirt suit and floor-length gown. Blazy explained its inspiration, as Gabrielle herself was an avid newspaper reader, made present through the medium she loved.
Elsewhere, materials that appeared like corals burned in deep reds and gowns shimmered in fish-scale paillettes. Stripes were also abound. The stripes nodded to Basque linen, the textile woven in this region for generations and long associated with beach chairs and umbrellas, while others recalled the horizontal Breton stripes of French sailors, tying the land back to the sea.
Blazy has also spoken openly about his fascination with mermaids. The collection made this clear towards the end of the show, with a sunset-toned skirt suit and a turquoise evening gown as the last two looks, fully made in fish-scale paillettes, their surfaces shifting and iridescent under the light. They also featured fishtail hems, which solidified Blazy’s manner of myth-making in couture.
Swimwear, the Chanel way
A cruise collection can’t be without a proper swimsuit, and Blazy delivered with exactitude. The black-and-white pieces drew from the jersey costumes Chanel designed for the 1924 ballet “Le Train Bleu.” While elegant, the swimwear was suffused with the particular glamour of the French Riviera.
The models also wore swim caps emblazoned with the house’s double-C logo. Many in the swimwear also donned incongruous yet delightful thigh-high rubber boots.
Toes in the sand and other coastal accessories
The internet has had lots of thoughts about the footwear. Chanel debuted beach sandals stripped of their soles entirely, with just a heel cap, ankle ties, and nothing else between foot and ground. As the models padded past the sand-colored runway carpet with bare toes, the intention was witty, as many of these models also carried animal-print pumps at their side, suggesting the story that a Chanel woman can slip from a cocktail party to the coastline without breaking her stride.
Art deco-inspired heels also nodded to the angular architecture of Biarritz, appearing in black-and-white or soft green Mary Jane silhouettes.
The jewelry was something to take a closer look at. The Chanel Cruise 2027 collection reinterpreted the house’s signature gems through a maritime lens, working with vivid gemstones, coastal forms, and shell earrings that are hard to miss. Models also donned hats with sculptural coral-like embellishments, others with dorsal-like fin patterns.
Meanwhile, the bags exemplified the balance of Chanel’s exacting craft and impeccable style, apt for the coast. The collection’s bags all had a coastal sensibility, from fish-scale paillettes on some, beachy raffia and coral motifs on others. Oversized beach panniers striped in the distinctive Basque pattern demonstrated a bag that can work equally well at the shore and in the city. While some dorsal fin and net-inspired styles in vibrant red and blue brought Blazy’s signature sense of the fantastical to something functional.
The foundation and the sea
What stands out in Blazy’s work for the Chanel Cruise 2027 collection is that he doesn’t fear colors, textures, patterns, or alternative shapes. And while he practices a sense of whimsy, he also honors the roots of the house’s history. Biarritz, in Gabrielle Chanel’s era, was a gathering place for artists. Igor Stravinsky, Jean Cocteau, and Pablo Picasso all spent time there. Picasso painted “The Bathers” in 1918 during a stay with Olga Khokhlova.
Blazy, in his own words, says, “Far from the Paris salon, Chanel found in Biarritz different ways of being and seeing, of movement and freedom… It is a place that offers the perfect balance between function and fiction. Among artists, workers, nobility, sailors, and the natural world, everyone and everything shared the same stage, living together as a norm. All had a role to play.”
A century later, Blazy’s collection has made the same argument that fashion is most powerful when it holds the serious and the joyful in the same hand. “Sous le Salon, la Plage” did more than return Chanel to its first-ever location in Biarritz, but brought Chanel back to the past, while holding up joy in the present.
