Karl Lagerfeld dreamt of it for decades. Matthieu Blazy simply did it. Yesterday, Chanel Cruise 2027 -By the sea landed at the Casino Municipal in Biarritz, the Art Deco seafront casino transformed for the occasion with beige deep-pile carpet, mirrored columns and flower arrangements in acid bright hues. In 1915, Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel opened the Maison's first couture house in this Basque seaside town.
The Front Row
Celebrities split across two shows. Marion Cotillard and Sofia Coppola attended the morning presentayion. The afternoon brought Nicole Kidman, A$AP Rocky, Michaela Coel, Tilda Swinton, Charlotte Casiraghi, Paloma Elsesser and Anamaria Vartolomei. The night before, Kidman attended a welcome cocktail at the town's covered food market, delighting locals by posing for selfies outside.
At the front row, Kidman wore a black bckless Chanel Fall 2026 dress. A$AP Rocky cut through the monochrome with color and personality: relaxed trousers, a western-leaning jacket, a red shirt, and a pink Chanel bag with matching mini ballet flats nodding to his daughter Rocki Irish Mayers. Michaela Coel and Marion Cotillard both worked variations of the Chanel little black dress; Coel's accessories gave her look the sharper edge. Charlotte Casiraghi revisited the Chanel Spring 2026 bib shirt, a piece that has now travelled through Kidman, Jessie Buckley and Jacob Elordi.
Chanel Cruise 2027 By The Sea Collection
The Show opened with a reinterpretation of the iconic petite robe noire, created exactly a century ago and inspired, as Blazy reminded, by the dresses worn by maids and shop girls. "I call it the first revenge dress," he said. The large bow from Coco's original 1926 sketch, so often erased from historical memory, returned here as a clutch.
From that starting point, Blazy moved into French workwear: cotton canvases, denim, compact textures. Stripes arrived in multiple forms, from fabrics drawn from traditional Basque home linens to a sailor stripe quarter-zip sweater. Blazy's own personal uniform, worn over a full skirt patterned after vintage beach umbrellas. The Maison's iconic double-C logo transformed into Art Deco-style graphics across several looks, including a black-and-white skirt suit reproduced directly from an archival drawing worn by Chanel ambassador Bhavitha Mandava.
Coco Chanel's 1924 ballet Le Train Bleu, created alongside Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau, surfaced in retro swimsuits worn with chin-strap swimming caps, straw versions sprouting what read unmistakably as Sonic the Hedgehog spikes. The marine references deepened as the collection progressed: earrings sculpted as seashells, coral-red dresses, a skirt patterned after tropical fish skin. The Collection closed with Blazy's personal obsession made literal: model Noor Khan, who starred as a sea creature in the show's teaser film, closed the runway in a turquoise sequined gown with a fishtail hem. Before her, a sunset mermaid in orange, red and pink sequins. Two closing looks that needed no explanation.
Kidman, asked whether she could one day play Coco Chanel on screen, closed the conversation with the line of the season: "I have much too much respect for Coco Chanel to think of playing her. I think she should play herself, as she is doing constantly through the pen of Matthieu Blazy."
