Karl Lagerfeld had a holiday home in Biarritz. He shot a campaign there in 2003 — two models in skirts and heels carrying Chanel-branded surfboards — and he wanted to stage a show in the town for years. He never did. Matthieu Blazy arrived in the Atlantic resort on April 28, 2026, set up at the Art Deco Le Casino Municipal on the seafront, and did it in his first year. That sequencing matters. Blazy is not haunted by what Lagerfeld left unfinished — he is working with it, acknowledging it, and then moving forward. The Cruise 2027 collection is the clearest proof yet that he understands both the weight of what he inherited and the specific freedom it gives him.

The return to Biarritz carried a specific historical logic. In 1915, Gabrielle Chanel arrived in the town with her lover Arthur 'Boy' Capel and opened her first fashion house — the origin point of what eventually became known as the Chanel style. The resort clientele who descended on the Hôtel du Palais gave Chanel her first market. The swimmers, the sailors, and the avant-garde artists surrounding her gave her the visual language she built her codes from. Blazy's collection did not revisit that history as nostalgia. It used it as a starting point and then pushed through to something that felt entirely current.

This was his fifth collection since joining as creative director in late 2024 — following the debut Spring 2026 show, the viral Métiers d'Art collection staged in an abandoned New York subway platform, and Fall 2026 — and the most playful of his tenure so far. The marine references were literal: swim caps with chin straps, earrings shaped like red peppers, rubber wading boots, shell-shaped earrings, knitted headpieces with fin detailing. The house's classic raffia tote was blown up to exaggerated proportions. A mermaid appeared in the pre-show film and closed the runway itself. None of it felt forced. All of it felt like someone who has been coming to Biarritz since childhood and finally got to make something about it.

The Show That Lagerfeld Never Got to Stage

The venue transformation was precisely calibrated. Beige deep-pile carpet. Mirrored columns. Flower arrangements in acid-bright hues that connected the interior to the bold palette of the collection without overwhelming the Art Deco architecture of the building. The Casino Municipal sits on the Biarritz seafront — the same Atlantic coastline that defined Coco Chanel's early years in the town and that Blazy described as the starting point for everything in the collection.

Nicole Kidman, Tilda Swinton, A$AP Rocky, and Sofia Coppola occupied the front row. The guest list alone communicated the tonal range Blazy was working with — formal and cultural authority alongside pop and counterculture — which is precisely the range the collection covered across its 79 looks.

The pre-show film set the narrative. Model Noor Khan starred as a mermaid in a black-and-white short — a direct expression of one of Blazy's stated personal obsessions — and then reappeared at the close of the runway in a turquoise sequined gown with a fishtail hem to complete the arc. The marine thread ran through the entire collection, but it was held in productive tension with the archive research and the workwear references that gave the show its structural backbone.

Blazy addressed the Lagerfeld legacy directly after the show. He noted that for his debut collection, the focus needed to be the fundamentals of Gabrielle Chanel's original vision. For the cruise and Métiers d'Art collections, he said, what Lagerfeld contributed as a pop cultural monument needed to be integrated. The Biarritz show was the first time both registers were fully present in the same collection — heritage and pop, archive and fantasy, Gabrielle and Karl.

As the finale closed to Charles Aznavour's ballad 'Emmenez-moi,' guests rose from their seats. The standing ovation at a cruise collection — a presentation format that rarely generates that kind of response — was the most direct signal of what Blazy had achieved: he had made a resort show feel like an event.

The interior of Biarritz's Art Deco Le Casino Municipal was transformed with beige deep-pile carpet, mirrored columns, and acid-bright floral arrangements for the Cruise 2027 presentation.

The Key Looks From the Cruise 2027 Runway

The collection's opening look was a faithful reinterpretation of Chanel's 1926 petite robe noire — the design Blazy described as 'the first revenge dress.'

THE LITTLE BLACK DRESS — ARCHIVE REVIVAL

The collection opened with a direct reinterpretation of the 1926 petite robe noire — Chanel's original little black dress, created as an elevation of the practical clothing worn by working women including shop assistants, governesses, and students. Blazy called it the first revenge dress: a design that leveled the visual field between grand ladies and the women who served them. The opening look established the collection's central argument before a single marine reference had appeared on the runway.

Sailor-stripe quarter-zip sweaters, Basque-linen woven fabrics, and graphic patterns drawn from vintage beach umbrellas carried the collection's sportswear references.

MARINIÈRE AND STRIPE LOOKS — SPORTSWEAR CODES

The stripe story was the collection's most commercially legible thread. The sailor-stripe quarter-zip — Blazy's own daily uniform — appeared over a full skirt in a graphic pattern sourced from vintage beach umbrella designs. Basque home linen fabrics provided texture and local specificity. The genderless pantsuits that have become one of Blazy's signatures at Chanel reappeared, worn here with swimsuits underneath — a construction that explicitly connects the house's earliest sportswear codes to their contemporary equivalent.

Model Noor Khan closed the Cruise 2027 show in a turquoise sequined gown with a fishtail hem — completing the mermaid narrative that began in the pre-show film.

MERMAID FINALE AND EVENINGWEAR — FANTASY REGISTER

The collection's evening register was its most extravagant and its most effective. Ornately beaded gowns with mermaid silhouettes featured bright orange and aquamarine beading designed to suggest fish scales. Billowing ballgowns in the collection's sunset palette closed out the progression from workwear to eveningwear that structured the whole show. Noor Khan's turquoise fishtail closing look, connecting back to the pre-show film in which she appeared as a sea creature, gave the collection a narrative coherence that resort shows rarely achieve.

The Best Pieces to Shop From the Collection

“Chanel Cruise 2027 is Matthieu Blazy's most fully realized collection to date. It does not choose between the house's archive and its future — it holds both simultaneously. The mermaid gowns are the headline. The little black dress revival is the argument. The Basque stripe sweater is what everyone will actually wear. All three are correct.”

The collection's commercially strongest pieces sit in the sportswear and tailoring categories rather than the eveningwear. The sailor-stripe quarter-zip, the genderless pantsuits, and the double-C logo skirt suit — drawn directly from archival drawings — are the pieces that will translate most readily from runway to wardrobe. Each carries enough of the collection's marine and archival references to feel specific to this moment without requiring the wearer to commit to the full fantasy register.

For those drawn to the collection's more dramatic end, the turquoise fishtail gown and the beaded mermaid-silhouette eveningwear represent Blazy's most technically ambitious work at the house so far. The accessories — particularly the open-toe heel described by multiple reviewers as the season's most revolutionary footwear — and the preposterous details like red pepper earrings and oversized straw baskets are the pieces that will generate the most sustained social media attention.

How to Wear the Chanel Cruise 2027 Aesthetic

WRITTEN BYMiles Ashford

Miles Ashford reports from the front row across New York, London, Milan, and Paris every season. Equal parts analyst and storyteller, he breaks down what designers are saying — and what they're not — through the silhouettes, fabrics, and staging choices that define each collection.