Chanel to show its cruise collection in Marseille in May

Chanel is returning to France for its cruise collection. After showing in Los Angeles last spring, the French luxury label is preparing to head back down south, once again celebrating the Mediterranean. Its new collection for spring 2025 will be held in Marseille on May 2.

The label did not specify the exact location of the show. All it said in a press release was that it wanted to celebrate “the energy and cultural vitality of one of the most effervescent cities in the Mediterranean,” and that it was delighted “to make a stopover in a city open to all cultures.”

Chanel, whose creative director is Virginie Viard, has been attached to the South of France and the French Riviera from the outset. In 2022, it staged its cruise collection in Monaco at the Monte-Carlo Beach Hotel, while the previous year it had chosen the Carrières de Lumières in Baux-de-Provence.

Another example: in May 2018, for the 2019 cruise fashion show in Paris, the models descended from a large ocean liner named La Pausa, in reference to Gabrielle Chanel’s villa in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, once again underlining the designer’s passion for the maritime world and connection with the label’s fundamentals. And let’s not forget the latest collection for Spring/Summer 2024, in which Virginie Viard drew her inspiration from the famous Villa Noailles in Hyères and its hanging Mediterranean gardens.

As a reminder, it was in 1919 that Gabrielle Chanel first offered a small mid-season collection in her Biarritz boutique to her customers who were used to seaside resorts and yachting. Over the years, this type of collection became established, with an increasingly extensive range. Having fallen into disuse in the 1950s, the cruise collection was revived by Karl Lagerfeld who, as soon as he arrived at Chanel in 1983, presented silhouettes at the end of spring, alongside ready-to-wear, heralding the following summer. From the 2000s onwards, annual fashion shows were organised and the concept gradually spread throughout the fashion industry.