Chanel Cruise 2026/27 Campaign by Alec Soth

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Review of Chanel Cruise 2026 Ad Campaign by Creative Director Matthieu Blazy and Photographer Alec Soth with models Josephen Akuei, Stephanie Cavalli, Ruyu Chen, Chiara Dorward, Bhavitha Mandava, Bruna Souza and Anne Vyalitsyna

Chanel looks as though it is having a rather good holiday. There is laughter, a little flirting with the camera, and the familiar discovery that beautiful shoes collect sand just as readily as ordinary ones. For the House’s Cruise 2026/27 campaign, Alec Soth photographs Matthieu Blazy’s first Chanel Cruise collection in Biarritz with a welcome sense of pleasure. These women have dressed for themselves and one another, with no apparent intention of letting a little Atlantic weather spoil the afternoon.

Having presented the Cruise collection in Biarritz earlier this year, Chanel returns to the coast with a little less ceremony and the same appetite for fresh air. The connection goes back to 1915, when Gabrielle Chanel opened her couture house here, but the campaign wears that history lightly. Swimming caps meet tweed, bare feet emerge beneath evening dresses, and women reach across rocks to steady one another. The show introduced the wardrobe; now it seems to be enjoying its holiday.

The picture that best captures the mood finds Bhavitha Mandava laughing as she empties sand from a green slingback. She balances on one leg, a blue handbag dangling from her other hand, wearing a black jacket and skirt crossed by enormous white double Cs. The bag is lovely, the suit unmistakably Chanel, but it is the sand tumbling from that green shoe that makes you want to join her. There is something appealing about a House allowing its polish to meet such a familiar inconvenience. The clothes can take it. So, clearly, can she.

Soth gives that pleasure plenty of space. His broad beach scenes let the eye wander from a close portrait to something happening farther along the shore. A woman holds a woven bag against dark tailoring while, behind her, another raises an arm and a ship-shaped kite floats above the water. Elsewhere, bathers emerge from the surf beyond a striped tent. The pictures reward looking around. Even when the women face the camera, the sea keeps moving behind them, suggesting that the afternoon has other things on its mind besides being photographed.

The collection benefits enormously from this mood. Its swimming caps and abbreviated bathing silhouettes have a cheerful eccentricity, especially alongside the almost comically tall boots planted on the rocks. Red and navy stripes feel at home without becoming polite nautical shorthand. A sailor sweater meets a sweeping patterned skirt; a cream dress announces Chanel in red across the chest. Blazy is generous with the House’s signatures, sometimes extravagantly so, but the campaign wears that confidence lightly. These are clothes to be enjoyed rather than handled with archival gloves.

There is fantasy here, too. Orange and turquoise dresses shimmer against weathered rock like sea creatures briefly persuaded to come ashore. A carousel dolphin makes an excellent seat for a striped suit and swimming cap. The gilded furniture scattered across the beach lends the eveningwear a faintly absurd grandeur, as though someone had decided the salon was too stuffy and moved the entire appointment outdoors. Soth keeps a remarkably straight face through all of it. The calm horizon and pale skies allow the jokes to land without turning the campaign into a comedy sketch.

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The warmer moments make some of the more formal groupings feel a little reserved by comparison. Occasionally, the women seem to be waiting in their assigned places while the scenery does the entertaining. More exchanges like the outstretched hands across the rocks would have brought those pictures closer to the easy companionship the campaign suggests. Yet the change of pace can also be lovely. At the aquarium, a woman leans toward a turtle beyond the glass, her reflection hovering beside her face. For a moment, even the jewelry seems to be looking at something else.

What stays with you is the sense that Chanel has given itself permission to enjoy being Chanel. The bags remain desirable, the black dresses retain their poise, and the double Cs are hardly hiding, but none of that prevents a woman from laughing or taking off her shoes. Blazy’s return to Biarritz finds something more useful than nostalgia: the pleasure of getting dressed for a day whose possibilities are still open. The salon can wait. There is sand in the slingbacks.