Photo Credits: Acielle Style Du Monde
There are places that transcend geography — they exist as mood, as mythology. On the terraced gardens of Villa d’Este, where mist lifts slowly from the surface of Lake Como like a silk scarf slipping from a shoulder, Chanel staged a Cruise 2025/26 show that defied categorization. It was not merely fashion, nor simply spectacle. It was a cinematic meditation on femininity, serenity, and legacy — a poetic interlude suspended in time.
Video Credits: Chanel Official Via Instagram
As the maison stands on the precipice of creative renewal, with Matthieu Blazy preparing to assume its artistic reins, this collection felt like a final exhale before a new chapter begins. Developed by the in-house ateliers with unmistakable reverence, it reflected both continuity and contemplation, whispering the house codes while gesturing toward something just out of reach — quieter, more fluid, yet utterly Chanel.
Photo Credits: Alessandro Lucioni
The setting itself was a character. Villa d’Este, with its baroque geometry and faded grandeur, offered more than idyllic beauty — it framed the very essence of the collection. The lake shimmered below like liquid glass, absorbing the hues above and reflecting them back softened. From every marble staircase, colonnade, and floating pontoon, the show unfolded like the slow panning shot of a vintage Italian film. Each look, a moment. Each model, a pause between lines of dialogue.
Photo Credits: Alessandro Lucioni
The moodboard was cast in light. Pastel tones dominated, not as sweet nothings but as tonal studies in restraint — seashell pink, fog lavender, glacial mint, linen white, and sun-faded yellow. These were not designed to startle, but to glow quietly under Como’s melancholic skies. They felt worn-in, softened by memory, curated by time.
Photo Credits: Alessando Lucioni
The silhouettes were airy, yet decisive. Culottes with marine stripes embroidered in sequins played against longline jackets with razor-sharp sailor collars in gossamer silks. There were coats that moved like capes and organza that barely clung to the skin. Everything was considered, nothing ornamental for its own sake.
Photo Credits: Alessandro Luconi
Tweed — that eternal Chanel signature — arrived reborn. No longer rustic or dry, it was crystallized, luminous, as though dipped in stardust or glazed with lake mist. It caught the light without screaming for it. The fabric felt as if it had absorbed the spirit of Villa d’Este itself: patinaed, precious, enduring.
Accessories, too, spoke in soft tones — flat mules with pearl buckles, iridescent ropes worn like jewelry and moorings, bags shaped like sails folded mid-journey. The nautical reference was never costume. It was memory, not mimicry.
Photo Credits: Alessandro Lucioni
This was glamour that doesn’t try. It doesn’t demand the spotlight — it walks through it like fog. The Cruise 2025/26 collection wasn’t about arriving somewhere new; it was about lingering, wandering, dressing not for the world but for the silence just before someone notices. It was a reminder that sometimes the most radical act of style is elegance without noise.
As the show closed and the lake swallowed the last reflections of evening, the mood lingered. Chanel offered not just clothes, but a gesture — of grace, of pause, of timelessness. And as the maison prepares for its next chapter under Blazy’s visionary direction, this moment at Villa d’Este will remain: still, shimmering, unforgettable.
Photo Credits: Alessandro Lucioni
Photo Credits: Acielle
