Chanel Cruise ‘27: The Politics of Practicality
The French fashion house Chanel is one of the most notorious and luxurious brands in the entire industry, as well as one of the most influential on culture overall. However, despite being trailblazers throughout the 20th century, the 21st century brought about rumors that the house was (for all intents and purposes) dead.
Yet, despite some underwhelming collections since Karl Lagerfeld’s death, the choice to appoint Matthiew Blazy as the Creative Director of the house may have already managed to justify itself within the first year of its tenure. The Lyst Index, an online luxury fashion database that ranks the hottest brands of each quarter, named Chanel as the number one hottest fashion brand following Blazy’s Spring/Summer 26 collection for the house. This was pivotal, as it was not only the first time the fashion house has earned the top spot, but also the first time the brand has even broken into the top 20 to begin with.
While the Lyst Index has also disclosed that their metrics for evaluating brands has also changed stepping into 2026, it’s undeniable that Blazy’s cosmic collection managed to captivate audiences in a way that just simply had not been happening for close to a decade. The same can be said for the most recent 2027 Cruise Collection, posing its own questions regarding the emergent Chanel brand identity, as well as Blazy’s philosophy on the off-season show.
The collection itself featured a plethora of referential designs, drawing parallels between Chanel’s brand heritage, and everyday Resort-wear staples. Renditions of the house’s traditional tweed skirt sets were mixed among slinky silk scarf-like dresses, as well as tousled billowy skirts and quarter-zip sweaters. Embroidery and crochet mixed seamlessly with more boyish button ups, incorporating browns and reds with sunnier yellows and pale blues. Some stand-out pieces included a newspaper look heavily inspired by Christian Dior’s newspaper dress from 1998, as well as closing the show with two intricately beaded mermaid looks.
However, what stood out to me the most was undoubtedly the accessories. Knee-high wellies styled with tweed one-pieces and matching swim caps. The swim caps in particular reminded me of some of Blazy’s most viral works at Bottega Veneta, playing with textiles to create leather knit socks and flowers. Some renditions were crochet, others were seemingly leather, but none of them looked particularly waterproof. One of the most viral pieces include the half-sandals sported by multiple models throughout the collection, including the closing two looks.
While the sandals undoubtedly helped to generate more buzz around the collection for their seeming impracticality, that can’t help but feel like a deliberate choice. Chanel is far from the only brand to have developed shoes along this vein, with Jeremy Scott creating a similar gauze-wrapped heel for SS97. Fashion (and design in general) will always exist within the tension of art and practicality, spinning utilitarian items into impractical and avant garde renditions for the sake of constant reinvention and creating status symbols. Editors at Vogue discussed how the piece wouldn’t quite be for the city stomper or everyday wear, but more so for a chic dinner party at home or some high-class poolside activity.
It’s an interesting angle for Chanel to take, considering that the house is one of the last-standing Maisons to function fully independently. While Dior, Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, and Chloe have all been bought-up by major luxury conglomerates, Chanel is the poster-child for singular designers that call upon a well-established sense of brand heritage. Besides many of the design queues coming from Coco’s original designs (tweed, midi flowy skirts, clunky fashion jewelry, embroidered Carnelia flowers), the location of the show in beachy Biarritz was also an homage to the beginning of Coco’s career.
Lagerfeld was also ever-present in the show: particularly in the black and white tweeds, beige textured textiles, bright bubblegum pinks, and the high slits on the skirts. Lagerfeld’s masterful intervention into the 90s Logomania was also clearly incorporated, with the Chanel C’s making their way into the prints of the silk button ups, as well as into the necklines of the pieces. A cream and red boat-neck dress seamlessly incorporated the logo along the top, as well as the swooping off-the-shoulder sleeves for a black and white dress.
The inclusion of crochet could also be a reference to Virginie Viard’s Chanel Cruise collection for 2026, which also included a near identical baggy tweed pink look as Blazy’s collection. Her black leather shorts were also reinvented in a chocolate brown for Blazy’s collection, once again calling the practicality of such a piece into question in terms of dressing for the weather. Blazy’s personal intervention undoubtedly came from his more avant garde, shark-finned swimcaps, as well as the designer running out at the end of the show in his own quarter-zip.
Blazy used to spend time throughout his childhood at Biarritz itself, tying his own heritage to Coco’s. In my Master’s thesis, I argued that Blazy was a smart choice to head the house considering his ability to transmute pre-existing brand identities and turn them into something that could captivate a modern fashion audience. Chanel’s strength and weakness both lie in their reliance on brand heritage to maintain cultural capital, and Blazy has undoubtedly found a way to subvert their codes just enough to garner widespread mainstream attention.
Even if it comes at the cost of practicality (and its impracticality acting as the very reason fast fashion brands will not be able to replicate looks like the sandals and swimcaps for a mainstream audience), Blazy is well aware of his responsibilities at the historic house. Chanel was also one of the leading pioneers of the Resort collection itself, an event within the fashion calendar that most other luxury fashion brands won’t even participate in due to lack of time and resources. Exclusivity is in itself impractical, but using it as a platform for hype has allowed the brand to find its way at the top once again.
Written By: Alia Ayoubi @aliairis
Edited By: Jules Nati
