For their latest cruise collection, Chanel won’t embrace even a vestige of progress

It is possible that since there is now a new creative director to lead the brand somewhere, the design team has decided to give up. Chanel’s final collection—the cruise—by what is known to be their Fashion Creation Studio is still a rudderless effort, even if it seemed to be hanging on the last threads of the Virginie Viard years. It was as if a group of women who came together to sew to fantasize living a better life. Although Matthieu Blazy has reportedly started work, it is likely he was not involved in the collection. Without a designated creative head to steer the course, the studio might have opted for a safe approach, revisiting familiar territory rather than venturing into the more experimental. This is without doubt a holding pattern until Mr Blazy unveils his spring/summer 2026 in October.

In their show notes, Chanel painted the looks as “the joy of getting dressed up to be noticed”—a strategy unchanged since Karl Lagerfeld’s time. And made totally meretricious during the Viard years. Curiously, the brand also said that “strings of beads, black sunglasses and long gloves, sequins and lamé reflect the Hollywood charm of the collection”. But Coco Chanel herself did not consider Hollywood with high regard. After a short unsuccessful stint designing for tinseltown, she famously said, “Hollywood is the capital of bad taste … and it is vulgar.” In an article in The New York times that assessed her dressing of Amercian movie stars onscreen and off, the daily said, Chanel “made a lady look like a lady. Hollywood wants a lady to look like two ladies.”

It seems Coco Chanel’s vision and Hollywood’s interpretation weren’t entirely aligned. Just like Virginie Viard’s presumably did not meet with the expectations of the powers at Chanel, which possibly resulted in her rapid, no-explanation departure. Yet Chanel was now saying that the collection desired to offer the “charm of Hollywood”. Another irony: many of the aesthetic considerations, from the colours to the prints to the silhouettes, could not exist outside Ms Viard’s shadow. Whether this was unintentional echoes or market considerations cannot be immediately discerned. The collection was predictable, adhering to expected tropes without any surprising or groundbreaking elements, not that, at this stage, we were expecting any.

The Fashion Creative Studio (to be sure, many probably worked with Ms Viard before) spotlighted three details that could potentially be dated when unimaginatively executed—and they were: The halterneck, the wing collar, and the peplum. These were the details commonly associated with unambiguous femininity, reinforcing—even when they need not have to—what a commercial brand Chanel is. From loose Chanel suits with the looseness of pajamas to Phuket-ready openwork separates, the many looks—69 of them (ten less than the last cruise)—offered no discernible narrative or emotional connection conveyed through the clothes or the accessories, or the bags (those useless orb minaudiere). Perhaps, therefore, the need for the show to be staged at the Villa d’Este on the banks of Lake Como. Let the setting do the talking. Thankfully, this could be the last of the inane prattle.

Photos: Chanel