Chanel Cruise 2027: Matthieu Blazy takes a deep dive into the archives
With guests like Nicole Kidman, Tilda Swinton and ASAP Rocky in attendance, Matthieu Blazy presented his Chanel Cruise 2027 collection in the very place where Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel conceived of resortwear: Biarritz. The glamorous seaside town, located on France’s Basque coast, was where Mademoiselle Chanel opened her couture house a century ago, and where she offered her first collections.
“Far from the Paris salon, Chanel found in Biarritz different ways of being and seeing, of movement and freedom,” said Blazy of the French fashion designer. “She made them her fashion pedestal. 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.”
For Chanel’s Cruise 2027 collection, Blazy drew upon the many inspirations that Biarritz has to offer—the sun, the sea, the beach—as well as the various forms of French workwear that have shaped fashion history. That includes the sailor’s uniform and the little black dress, which Gabrielle Chanel popularised in the 1920s. Blazy also heavily referenced the Chanel archives for his latest collection, emphasising the timelessness and versatility of Gabrielle Chanel’s designs.
Ahead, take a deep dive into the Chanel Cruise 2027 collection and its many stylish inspirations.
The Little Black Dress
The show opened with a little black dress—a recreation of Gabrielle Chanel’s iconic sketch that was immortalised in the pages of Vogue in 1926, which Blazy calls the “revenge dress”. “She borrowed the black dress from the workers, from the servant, from the shop girls,” Blazy told Guardian. “She decontextualised it and put it on the aristocracy, imposing her taste on them. It was a revenge on her own social status.” Chanel’s original LBD featured a large bow on the back—a detail that Blazy added to the clutch bag that the opening model held. Blazy also refreshed the Chanel LBD with a sense of ease: instead of a pearl necklace and heels, the opening model wore large seashell earrings and a pair of loafers.
Seeing Double Cs
Another one of Gabrielle Chanel’s original designs was spotted on Chanel house ambassador Bhavitha Mandava. The Indian model was clad in a stylish black skirt suit, punctuated with oversized double-C logos. Gabrielle Chanel boldly added logos to her clothes in the 1930s, using the sinuous lines of the letter “C” as design elements, not merely as branding. Blazy revived that practice: in the collection, the Chanel logo appeared connected to the necklines of sweaters and dresses, or as cut-outs on beach-ready jersey pieces.
From Biarritz With Love
To capture the allure of Biarritz, Blazy sent down looks featuring scenes of the picture-perfect French resort town itself. One tweed coat was elaborately woven with a colourful illustration of the Biarritz coast in the style of vintage postcards. A jacquard wool polo shirt, meanwhile, depicted the beach landscape during a beautiful sunset. Look closer and you’ll spot a woman carrying a surfboard—a nod to Chanel’s Spring/Summer 2003 campaign, when former creative director Karl Lagerfeld photographed models walking along the Biarritz beach with Chanel logo surfboards in tow.
Making The Headlines
Besides postcards, another form of printed matter that inspired the Chanel Cruise 2027 collection is the newspaper. As he told Guardian, Blazy was struck by a quote from Gabrielle Chanel in which she said she liked “to read the newspaper, like men.” Accordingly, models came down the runway in a newspaper-print skirt suit and even a newspaper-print gown. The clothes double as records of fashion history: their headlines and reports are all about Gabrielle Chanel’s time in Biarritz, when she ran her fashion house out of the Villa de Larralde in the late 1910s.
Big, Basque Stripes
Double C logos and newspaper prints aside, Chanel’s Cruise 2027 collection is dominated by stripes—lots of it. The graphic lines printed on dresses are a nod to Basque linen, the colourful textile produced in Basque Country that is most famously used on beach chairs. Patterns from vintage beach umbrellas, meanwhile, adorn full skirts with fringe trims (fashion fans will recognise those voluminous pieces, which Blazy also showed in his debut Bottega Veneta collection in 2022). The quarter-zip sweater, a classic piece of sportswear that Blazy loves, is reimagined in the Breton stripes of a French sailor’s uniform, tying it to the collection’s marine theme.
Swim Good
What’s a beach-inspired collection without a bathing suit? Chanel’s Cruise 2027 collection offered plenty of chic swimsuits and minidresses that you can flaunt on your next seaside vacation. (The black and white ensembles are actually inspired by the jersey costumes that Gabrielle Chanel designed for the 1924 ballet, Le Train Bleu.) Their accompanying accessories will make a splash too: who wouldn’t want to jump into the ocean with a Chanel logo swim cap on, or walk along the shoreline in thigh-high rubber wading boots?
Toes in the Sand
While we’re on the topic of fun footwear, Chanel’s latest collection offers up the wackiest shoes we’ve seen in a while: beach sandals without soles. The shoes were designed with nothing more than a heel cap and ankle ties, which meant that models walked the sand-hued carpet at Chanel’s Cruise 2027 runway show with their toes out. Some of them carried an extra pair of shoes—animal print pumps, for example—suggesting the idea of the Chanel woman going from a cocktail party at Biarritz’s glitzy casino and straight to the beach. As another nod to Biarritz’s beautiful beaches, Blazy also designed a shimmering silk evening gown in a sand brown hue.
Under the Sea
Blazy’s Chanel collections have been replete with playful animal prints and motifs, and this one is no different. For Cruise 2027, sea creatures are in the spotlight: tweed jackets are trimmed with embroidered starfish, beaded bags and skirts feature fish and seahorses, and one beautiful evening dress was cut from red lace resembling coral. Blazy also created eclectic jackets and skirts covered in netting—a nod to the French fishermen’s favourite tool.
The Little Mermaid
Mythical sea creatures figured into Chanel’s Cruise 2027 collection, too. Blazy alluded to his obsession with mermaids in the show’s teaser photos, which transformed the model Noor Khan into a mermaid. It turns out that the mermaid also inspired the collection’s most striking looks: a sunset-hued skirt suit and a turquoise evening dress, both entirely embellished in fish-scale paillettes. The latter, which was the closing look, also featured a fishtail hem, completing the fantasy.
This article was written by Pameyla Cambe and first published on Lifestyle Asia Singapore on April 29 2026.