1 July 2026
Coco Chanel is credited as the first designer to introduce Resort (or Cruise) Collections. So it’s not surprising that a house with its beginnings rooted in resort wear would consistently create iconic summer looks combined with endless style inspiration. When Gabrielle Chanel opened her first boutique not in Paris but in Deauville in 1913 — and then in Biarritz two years later — she was making a declaration: that the most revolutionary fashion doesn’t happen in the salon. It happens at the water’s edge, where formality dissolves and the body asks to move freely. Jersey fabrics borrowed from men’s underwear, striped marinières pulled from the backs of fishermen, wide-legged trousers for women who needed to move – Chanel’s earliest and most radical ideas were all born from the seaside.
That founding instinct has never left the house. Season after season, decade after decade, no matter who holds the creative reins, CHANEL returns to summer with a particular authority. It is the house that genuinely understands what it means to dress well in the heat — not despite luxury, but through it. The camellia doesn’t wilt in the sun. The tweed, reimagined, breathes. The pearl looks better against tanned skin. And the woman in CHANEL looks most herself, perhaps, when barefoot on a boardwalk or crossing a harbour at golden hour with a quilted bag slung over one shoulder.
From Karl Lagerfeld’s most exuberant runway spectacles to Matthieu Blazy’s quietly seismic debut, what follows is a curated edit of the moments that prove it: a celebration of CHANEL at its most summertime-magnificent.
Gabrielle Chanel
Image Credit: CHANEL
Karl Lagerfeld was in full supermodel-era command for SS95, and Look 63 encapsulated everything the era did best. A matching pink tweed jacket – unbuttoned to reveal a sparkling sequined bra top – and miniskirt is paired with a chain belt and pink heels. This look has since become known as “the Barbie look”, but at the time it was the defining look of 90’s CHANEL. At a time when fashion took itself very seriously, CHANEL reminded everyone that summer is meant to be joyful – and that even a bikini can be elevated to chicness.
Image Credit: CHANEL
Image Credit: CHANEL
The Resort 2011 show was held at sunset in Saint-Tropez, with models, mostly barefoot, disembarking from a magnificent yacht directly onto the runway. Look 69 distilled the spirit of the collection with effortless precision: a cropped lightweight black tweed jacket, a camellia covered bikini top and high-waisted brown denim flares, accessorized with body chain, strappy sandals and two handbags – worn with relaxed ease that moved with the body and the sea breeze in equal measure. This look set the blueprint for what “CHANEL at the coast” means: never overdressed, always immaculate, and impossibly free.
Image Credit: CHANEL
Image Credit: CHANEL
The Resort 2012 collection took place at the Hôtel du Cap in Cap d’Antibes, and Look 18 was among its most perfect moments. A classic white tweed jacket worn overtop a strapless black one-piece bathing suit — the kind of casual luxury that only CHANEL can make feel genuinely special — was paired with black sandals, a boater hat, cat-eye sunglasses and a relaxed attitude that spoke of someone entirely comfortable in their own elegance. It is the CHANEL summer look for a woman who doesn’t need to try.
Image Credit: CHANEL
Image Credit: CHANEL
The Resort 2017 show was held in Havana, Cuba – one of Lagerfeld’s most extraordinary location choices. Against a backdrop of vintage cars and crumbling colonial facades, Lagerfeld offered looks that fused CHANEL’s classic codes with the saturated vibrancy of Cuban colour. This look brought the palette to life: a pastel pink jacket with a pink, blue and yellow knee-length skirt with fringe detailing. Beneath the jacket was the standout piece of the collection – the graphic Viva Coco Cuba Libre! tshirt. The unmistakable CHANEL sensibility transformed even the heat of Havana into something entirely its own.
Image Credit: CHANEL
Image Credit: Jason Kibbler
For SS19, Lagerfeld transformed the Grand Palais into a literal beach – sand, lapping water, a boardwalk, and a nipa hut – in what would become one of his last great gestures at the house. Look 20 captured the collection’s exuberant spirit: a jacket doubling as a dress, in white with sequin patterning, features three buttons and two pockets, accessorized with a wide-brimmed straw hat, dangling C H A and N E L earrings with lucite slide sandals in hand. This was CHANEL declaring, without apology, that summer is its natural habitat and that no other house does beachside glamour with quite this level of conviction or joy.
Image Credit: CHANEL
Image Credit: CHANEL
The SS21 collection, presented against a giant “CHANEL” sign in the style of the Hollywood sign inside the Grand Palais, was Virginie Viard’s tribute to the house’s muses and to the glamour of cinema. Look 63 came towards the end of the show in a cascade of evening brilliance: a fluid, column-length jumpsuit in white, with black trim detail and a deep V-neck, worn with a rope of pearls and utterly effortless in its movement. It was a reminder that CHANEL’s relationship with summer is not only about the beach or the promenade – it is equally at home on the red carpet, the hotel terrace, and under the stars. This was summer dressing elevated to its most cinematic.
Image Credit: CHANEL
Image Credit: Jesse Laitinen
Perhaps no opening look in recent CHANEL history made such an instant, defining statement. A scoop-neck white one-piece swimsuit, emblazoned with interlocking double C’s in monochromatic logo print, accessorized with lengths of CC chain necklaces and oversized sunglasses — and nothing else. Virginie Viard sent this out first, on a raised runway surrounded by photographers as a nod to the supermodel catwalks of the late ’80s and early ’90s. The message was clear: this is what CHANEL looks like at its most essential, its most joyful, and its most sure of itself. It was an opening look that doubled as a manifesto – a reminder that at CHANEL, even a swimsuit can stop traffic.
Image Credit: CHANEL
Image Credit: CHANEL
The SS23 collection, inspired by the ease of the modern CHANEL woman, moved against a black and white nouvelle vague screening with hands casually in pockets and an entirely unforced sense of cool. Look 38 arrived mid-collection as a two piece set – pastel pink tweed skirt and cropped jacket. Worn with drop pearl earrings, layered pearl choker, pearl waist chain and mesh ankle sock heels with bow detail. Beautifully understated and entirely wearable, it captured the appeal of CHANEL at its most real: clothes you want to live in, not just look at.
Image Credit: CHANEL
Image Credit: CHANEL
Matthieu Blazy’s debut at CHANEL was one of the most anticipated shows in the house’s recent history. One of its most perfectly resolved moments was Look 23. A pale yellow, lightweight pullover and matching midi skirt, both trimmed in yellow and white camellias, accessorized with a white feathered headdress, pumps and a small black quilted shopping bag. The look honoured one of the house’s originating silhouettes while infusing it with a freshness and lightness entirely suited to summer. This was the new CHANEL — rooted, purposeful, and radiantly alive.
Image Credit: Rafael Pavarotti
Image Credit: CHANEL
For his first Cruise collection as Creative Director, Matthieu Blazy returned CHANEL to Biarritz. The very town where Gabrielle Chanel opened her first couture house in 1915 and where, surrounded by sailors, artists, swimmers, and the Atlantic breeze, she invented the idea of resort fashion entirely. Look 51 arrived as a juxtaposition – a long leather dress for summer, flared with a fringed hem and interlocking cc emblems, styled with a seashell necklace and an oversized, striped beach bag. A summer paradox, indeed.
Image Credit: CHANEL
Image Credit: CHANEL
From 90’s biggest supermodels in logo-adorned bikinis on Karl Lagerfeld’s fantasy runway, to Matthieu Blazy’s mermaid finale on the Basque coast – CHANEL’s summer story is continuous, evolving, and always, unmistakably itself. The look changes. The silhouette shifts. New creative directors bring new visions and new references. But the underlying truth of what CHANEL does in summer remains constant: it dresses women for freedom, and makes that freedom look like the most refined thing in the world.
Gabrielle Chanel understood something that Parisian high-society did not: that real elegance asks to move. That luxury, at its best, should never constrain. That a woman is most beautiful when she is most herself: barefoot, sun-warmed, and entirely free. More than a century later, the house she built still knows exactly where its heart is. It is by the sea. It always will be.
Image Credit: CHANEL
Image Credit: CHANEL
Image Credit: Miguel Reveriego
Image Credit: Adam Franzino
Image Credit: Alasdair McLellan