28/04/2026
CHANEL Cruise 2026-27 Biarritz. Story by Eleonora de Gray, Editor-in-Chief of RUNWAY MAGAZINE. Photo Courtesy: Chanel: https://runwaymagazines.com/chanel-cruise-2026-27-biarritz/
Fast forward to April 28, 2026. Matthieu Blazy, in his first Cruise collection for the House, has returned to this “fashion pedestal.” Titled Sous le salon la plage (Under the salon, the beach), the collection is a masterful dialogue between the rigorous architecture of Art Deco and the fluid, shimmering fiction of the deep sea. It is a world where French workwear, leisure, and grandeur collide, dispensing with hierarchical clothing codes to create a new “CHANEL folklore.”
Blazy’s vision is “sensorially pleasurable and experimental.” He treats the House codes not as a rigid brand exercise, but as an elemental architecture. The double C is woven into the very structure of the garments, reflecting the sinuous contours Gabrielle introduced in the 1930s.
One cannot ignore the heavy, intellectual wink to John Galliano’s newspaper era. Throughout the runway, there is an echo—a sarcastic homage to the “newsprint” suits and dresses that once scandalized the industry. In Blazy’s hands, this is refined. We see springy tweeds and washed cotton canvas suiting that carry a graphic, ink-on-paper energy, particularly in the sharp-shouldered silhouettes that command attention before they even reach the light.
The “salon” has officially slipped into the beach, and the result is a folklore of fashion that Gabrielle herself would have recognized: a smart, attractive modernity that demands nothing less than total freedom.
The question remains: in this new era of “barefoot” luxury, are you ready to be the caterpillar by day and the butterfly—or perhaps the mermaid—by night?