Biarritz reborn-freedom, movement, and modern CHANEL

For the CHANEL Cruise 2026/27 collection, Matthieu Blazy returns to Biarritz, the seaside town where Gabrielle Chanel first opened her couture house in 1915. A setting rich in history and spirit, Biarritz once again becomes the backdrop for a collection that reflects the house’s enduring legacy and timeless vision.

“Far from the Paris salon, Chanel found in Biarritz different ways of being and seeing, of movement and freedom. 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.”Matthieu Blazy

Sous le salon la plage: In Biarritz, Gabrielle Chanel opened her couture house and presented her first collections. Here she aligned the timeless natural world with the timely modern one, and in so doing definitively changed the existing order of fashion.

Helping to free women from the literal constraints of convention found in a salon-bound existence, it was the world of the outdoors, of the elements, of the sea, the beach, the sun and the wind, that demanded practicality and comfort in movement. In her new jersey and sportswear, Gabrielle Chanel so provided.

In his first CHANEL Cruise collection, Matthieu Blazy, Artistic Director of Fashion Activities, celebrates the Basque coast, both purposefully and playfully. Experimenting with effortless ways of being and seeing, from the functionality of the black dress to the fiction of the mermaid, a new CHANEL folklore is formed.

Uniting French workwear, leisure wear and grandeur, the effervescent with the rigorous, from the uniforms of sailors to the flourish of gowns, hierarchical clothing codes are dispensed with. The salon slips into the beach, comfort is allied with sophistication, and the Basque stripe is a linking line throughout.

Here, the double C is the other linking line represented, not as an exercise in branding, but as part of an elemental architecture in garments. Radically introduced to clothing in the 1930s, its sinuous contours denote the rigorous signature of Gabrielle Chanel and a sense of her manifesto and autobiography in attire. Now it is up to the wearer to add her own.

The accessories of the collection reinforce the idea of a journey, spanning the practical and playful across an abundance of styles. From a small valise handbag to a full-grown holdall; from a waterproof flap bag to a giant striped beach panier. Even a pala carrier makes an appearance. Shoes straddle both salon and beach, taking the wearer wherever they please, from elegant Art Deco heels to barefoot ‘heel caps.’ The jewellery, too, echoes the Art Deco architecture of Biarritz, alongside its life aquatic, where shell earrings are held to the ear, and the CHANEL pearl finds its spiritual home.

“There is no beauty without freedom of the body.” Gabrielle Chanel

The show was equally defined by its front row, where a constellation of international guests added to the allure of the moment. Figures such as Tara Emad and Nicole Kidman were among those in attendance, joined by many other notable names, bringing a sense of cinematic glamour and global attention to the seaside presentation.