In partnership with CHANEL.
There is something about the Australian coastline that asks you to broaden your perspective. Perhaps its the way the horizon seems to stretch on endlessly, only stopping to meet the sky. Maybe it’s the coastal greenery that lines the sand dunes, adapting to salty winds and humid summer, persisting no matter what. At Umina Beach, where the landscape shifts with the light and the tide, the CHANEL Cruise 2026/27 collection finds itself in conversation with a setting world’s away from the place it was conceived in. And yet, it feels entirely at home.
Captured by surfer and photographer Gabi Spake, the collection’s accessories – a flap bag embroidered with vibrant sea creatures, loafers dusted with sand and shells, another bag encrusted entirely with green jewels that glisten like algae reflecting the sun beneath the surface of the water – find a natural affinity with the shores of the NSW Central Coast. Here, the natural textures, shifting tones and open expanses of the landscape are more than just a setting; they become part of the story.
Spake prefers to shoot on 35mm film – a choice that offers a more intimate interpretation of the collection, one that embraces the beauty of imperfection, the nostalgia of analogue photography, and Spake’s own relationship to the landscape. For her, Country is not simply a place, but an ongoing connection to land, water and the natural environment. Rather than treating the coastline as a picturesque setting, her lens allows it to shape and interact with the imagery itself. The water laps at the shore, the light shifts and changes, the the sand is textured with the footsteps of those who came before – it’s a visual dialogue between the natural world and the accessories.
In many ways, this relationship between fashion and the natural world speaks to the collection’s very beginnings. It was this same coastal sensibility that inspired Matthieu Blazy when conceiving his Cruise 2026 2027 collection. The artistic director took to Biarritz – the surf town on the Basque coast – a place long associated with the salty sea air and an easy way of life. The resulting collection felt a little more untamed than what we might traditionally associate with CHANEL, finding its footing somewhere between the house’s codes of craftsmanship and the freedom of the coastline.
There is a certain poetry in the contrast between the natural world and CHANEL’s considered craftsmanship. At first glance, a tote finished in supple suede or an earring in vibrant coral red feel at odds with the damp sand, the tide threatening to carry them away. But see them through Spake’s lens, and the CHANEL Cruise 2026 2027 accessories take on a new context. One shaped by her enduring sense of place, captured in the unmistakable grain of 35mm film.
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