Sand, Sea and Spectacle: Fashion’s Most Iconic Beach Shows
The runway as shoreline. These are the most ambitious beach inspired fashion shows ever staged…
Fashion show locations have always said a lot about a brand. Sometimes it is a runway in a museum, sometimes a castle, sometimes a car park turned into something completely unexpected. But lately, more and more designers keep coming back to the same place. The ocean.
There is something about water and sand that pulls creative directors in. Maybe it is nostalgia, maybe it is the way the light hits differently near the sea, or maybe it is simply the kind of freedom that a beach gives you that a traditional runway never can. Whatever it is, beach inspired shows have become some of the most talked about moments in fashion, and the teams behind them go to extraordinary lengths to actually pull it off.
Building real waves indoors, flying entire teams across the world, recreating sand and shoreline in cities that are nowhere near an ocean. It takes a serious amount of vision and just as much production work to make a room full of people forget they are standing in Paris and not on a beach somewhere completely different.
These are some of the shows that did exactly that.
Chanel S/S 19, Le Grand Palais, Paris
Karl Lagerfeld built an actual functioning beach inside the Grand Palais for this show, complete with real sand, lapping tidal waves and a panoramic blue sky backdrop. It remains one of the most technically ambitious set builds in fashion history, requiring an entire engineered tidal system to create waves that genuinely broke against the shore. Guests sat on wooden pallets sunk into the sand while models walked barefoot through the water before slipping into clear lucite slide sandals on the boardwalk. Chanel lifeguards watched over the scene from their wooden huts. Pamela Anderson sat front row in a nod to the theme, and the collection itself, all candy-coloured tweeds, beach ball shaped bags and seashell accessories, mirrored the setting in every detail.
Jacquemus S/S 22, Oahu, Hawaii
For his first show staged outside France, Simon Porte Jacquemus took his entire production team to the island of Oahu, building a long blue runway directly on the beach with the Koʻolau mountain range as a backdrop. The decision to leave France entirely for a single show was a significant creative and logistical undertaking, and the brand made a deliberate point of working almost exclusively with local Hawaiian talent, stylists and models, many walking a runway for the very first time. The collection, titled Le Splash, took its cues from water itself, vivid blues reminiscent of David Hockney, swim-ready silhouettes and glass droplet embellishments by Canadian artist Tanya Lyons.
Saint Laurent Men’s S/S 20, Paradise Cove, Malibu
Anthony Vaccarello staged this show on an actual beach in Malibu on 6 June 2019, transforming the California coastline into something between a 1970s rock concert and a runway. The production team worked with the natural Pacific coastline rather than against it, using the setting sun as the show’s lighting designer and the ocean itself as the backdrop nobody could have built better. Heavily inspired by Mick Jagger’s era-defining style and the Rolling Stones’ 1975 tour, the collection leaned into denim, leather and an unmistakably rebellious West Coast energy.
Celine S/S 23, Saint-Tropez
Rather than a traditional runway, Hedi Slimane presented this collection, titled La Collection de Saint-Tropez, as a cinematic film shot along the sun-drenched French Riviera coastline. The decision to abandon the runway format entirely in favour of a directed film was its own kind of creative risk, requiring an entire production crew working more like a film unit than a traditional fashion show team. The result felt less like a presentation and more like a memory, capturing the languid, golden hour glamour of Saint-Tropez’s beach culture in a way few shows ever manage.
Louis Vuitton Men’s S/S 27, Paris
Pharrell Williams brought the ocean to the heart of Paris during the city’s hottest recorded day, working with production house Bureau Betak to build a monumental cascading wave as the centrepiece of the set, surrounded by a sand-covered runway. The scale of the engineering involved, a continuously flowing artificial wave installed inside a Paris venue, represented one of the most technically demanding builds the brand has attempted, and the team ensured the water was recycled through a closed-loop system while the sand was later donated to student beach volleyball courts on site.
Lead Image Courtesy of Instagram /@louisvuitton