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Chanel returns to Biarritz for its highly-anticipated Cruise 2026/27 show, revisiting the coastal city where its modern identity began. Framed by Atlantic light and artistic legacy, Creative Director Matthieu Blazy reinterpreted the Maison's codes through fluid silhouettes, craft and scenography, transforming history into a living, immersive dialogue between fashion, place and movement. Cabana reflects on Blazy's masterstroke.
BY BARBARA SPINELLI | HAPPENINGS | 30 APRIL 2026
This week, Chanel unveiled its Cruise 2026/27 collection in Biarritz, returning to a coastal city deeply embedded in the Maison’s origins and identity. Along the Atlantic, where light, wind and architecture intersect, Biarritz was both the setting and subject.
It was here, in 1915, that Gabrielle Chanel established her couture house after early success in Paris, Deauville and Monte Carlo. At the Villa de Larralde, just steps from the sea in Biarritz, she created a hybrid space of atelier, boutique and residence, an early echo of 31 Rue Cambon in Paris. More importantly, the Basque city offered freedom from unspoken Parisian codes and norms, allowing a new, more natural elegance to emerge.
Chanel transformed jersey, linen and cotton, then considered utilitarian, into elegant garments defined by ease and movement. Capes, dresses and separates followed the rhythm of the body, dissolving boundaries between day and night. From this approach emerged the House’s founding principles: functionality, fluidity and a stripped-back modernity that defined the Chanel silhouette.
Biarritz itself was a meeting point of artistic exchange. Notable figures, such as Igor Stravinsky, Jean Cocteau and Pablo Picasso, were drawn to its atmosphere of retreat and invention. More than a century later, that spirit reappears. In his Cruise collection for Chanel, Matthieu Blazy approaches Biarritz as living material rather than historical reference. His vision reframes clothing as a dialogue between function and imagination.
The much-lauded show opened with the Maison's iconic black dress, introduced by Gabrielle Chanel in 1926 as a radical act of simplicity. Revisited from its original sketch, it remains an archetype of precision and clarity, marking the continuity of a gesture that once redefined modern dress.
The scenography, conceived by French designer Martin Brûlé, extends this language into space. Rather than constructing a fixed set, Brûlé created an atmospheric environment where architecture receded and sensation took precedence. Light, openness and texture dissolved the boundary between interior and coastline, and within this landscape, craft anchored the narrative. Meanwhile, striking floral compositions by Thierry Boutemy animated the space, displayed in ceramic vessels by the historic Cazaux atelier, based in Biarritz since the late 19th century. Across seven generations, Jean-Marie and Joël Cazaux have refined a practice rooted in locally sourced Basque clay, shaped and fired through a slow, precise process that transforms earth into enduring form.
The collection moved fluidly between French workwear, nautical codes and leisure silhouettes. Sailor stripes, washed cottons, raffia, tweed and silk created a tactile vocabulary of movement. Garments shifted between structure and ease, echoing the rhythms of the coast.
The Maison's choice of accessories extended this sense of transition, from travel pieces to beach forms, while jewelry referenced both maritime life and Art Deco geometry. The double C appeared as a structural line rather than ornament, embedded within garments as a visual and conceptual framework.
Throughout the show, Biarritz itself took center stage, operating as both the origin and method of Blazy's new vision. The coastal French city is a unique place where opposites can be seen to coexist: discipline and ease, utility and elegance, land and sea. In returning here, Chanel does not revisit its past but reactivates it. Between craft, architecture and coastline, the Cruise 2026/27 collection could be seen as a continuation of the same forces that first defined the House: freedom, movement and light.
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