Matthieu Blazy Presents His First Chanel Cruise Collection in Biarritz

“Far from the Paris salon, Chanel found in Biarritz different ways of being and seeing, of movement and freedom,” said Blazy in the show’s notes. “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.”

It was in Biarritz that Chanel opened her couture house and presented her first collections surrounded by the sun, wind, sand, and sea. There she created clothes that rejected the constraints of and formality of Paris in favor of comfort, movement, and practicality.

For his trip to the seaside, Blazy also focused on wearability through a mix of French workwear, leisurewear, glamorous gowns, and plenty of swimwear.

There was fluttering silk foulard, rustling raffia, and washed cotton canvas along with springy tweeds, soft beaded knits, and layers of shimmering fish-scale paillettes.

The little black dress also played a key role in the collection as Blazy opened the show with a reworked version of Chanel’s 1926 black dress, based on an archival sketch that included a large bow visible only from the back. Chanel’s original dress was a revolution at the time of it’s debut, black dresses of the type most often associated with working women including servants and shopgirls, of which Chanel herself was one before launching her design career.