Chanel Cruise 2027’s Boldest Shoe Was Almost Not a Shoe at All

Matthieu Blazy has already surprised and delighted Chanel fans with his imaginative takes on the famed cap-toe. The designer just kept stripping it back — so much so that the boldest footwear statement at Chanel cruise 2027 was barely a shoe at all.

Several models walked the runway in Biarritz, France in barely-there sandals, which reduced the shoe to thin straps wrapped around the ankles and a small heel covering. Some came in metallic gold and silver, while black versions gave the shape a sharper graphic line. It was the kind of shoe Joelle Diderich noted in her WWD review as “little more than a heel cap,” and it worked because the reduction still read Chanel in context: not quite barefoot, not quite a sandal, and somehow, not far from the two-tone code Blazy had already started inverting.

Color kept the cap-toe from feeling too precious. Blazy sent out white pumps capped in bright greens and blues, along with an orange-and-black iteration with tiger stripes on the sides and rubberized thigh-high boots that treated the contrast toe as something playful rather than archival. Under cropped tailoring and textured, maximalist-leaning resort looks, the shoes gave the collection quick jolts of color while keeping the Chanel thread intact.

Blazy also kept the classic black-and-white cap-toe in play, though he rarely treated it as a straightforward archive lift. Some versions came as slingbacks with clean contrast at the toe, while others sharpened the idea with caged cutout details or more textured surfaces. Beneath matching shorts and tank sets, and fringed, layered resort styling, the black-and-white palette kept the Chanel code visible even when the silhouette moved away from the house’s most familiar pump.

Texture supplied the other major footwear story. Metallic woven mules, embellished sandals and striped pumps brought the collection’s surface play down to the foot, playing off the show’s larger mix of sailor stripes, beach-umbrella patterns, raffia-like finishes and decorative excess.

That range made the footwear feel like more than runway punctuation. Blazy did not simply rework Chanel’s cap-toe during his spring 2026 debut and move on. He has now stretched it into heel caps, saturated accents, woven surfaces, cutout slingbacks and playful boots — just the right amount of strange for a cruise collection staged where Coco Chanel first began building the codes he now has to make new.