Industry, Intimacy, Illumination: Ten Years of Lampoon at Dinner with Chanel

As Chanel prepares to present its Cruise Collection on Lake Como on 29 April, a Milan dinner for Lampoon Issue 31 marks the magazine’s decade in print

A Decade in Print—Issue 31 Launch Dinner

On a mild April evening in Milan, Lampoon welcomed friends and collaborators to celebrate a double milestone: the magazine’s first decade in print and the release of Issue 31. Rather than embracing ceremony, the evening settled into the easy cadence of a private dinner. Pomp gave way to candle-light, trading formality for genuine conversation—an approach that mirrored Lampoon’s editorial creed: truth before polish, conversation before spectacle.

Special Pages in Collaboration with Chanel

The same spirit shapes Issue 31, whose centrepiece is “The Culture of Curiosity,” a dossier created with Chanel. To explore the Maison’s SS25 collection, Lampoon invited leading lights of contemporary creativity to pair Chanel pieces with items from their own wardrobes. In doing so, each talent opened the doors to imagination, sharing insights into their process, worldview, and human commitments.

Setting the Stage for the Chanel Cruise 2025/26

Curiosity, of course, generates movement, and Chanel’s itinerary next leads to Lake Como, where on 29 April 2025 the house will present its Cruise 2025/26 collection. The choice of location continues a tradition of staging shows in places whose cultural and artistic resonance refracts the brand’s codes in fresh ways. It also affirms Chanel’s new era under Matthieu Blazy while nodding to Italy’s peerless craftsmanship.

An Evening at the Magna Pars Hotel à Parfum

Guests stepped through the old Marvin factory gate at Via Forcella 6 to enter the Magna Pars Hotel à Parfum. Neroli drifted across a courtyard where glass walls and white bricks exposed the site’s industrial bones; at the centre, a pocket garden of liquidambar, magnolia, and olive trees muffled the city’s hum. The setting—design laid bare, process visible—echoed both Lampoon’s rough-grained aesthetic and the dossier’s call to creative transparency. Even the menu, built on short, local supply chains, underlined the evening’s ethic: beauty begins where intent meets craft.

Lampoon 31, the Cover by Alessia Gunawan

One of Issue 31’s embossed covers features a photograph by Alessia Gunawan—excerpted from a special Chanel SS25 editorial—that balances raw energy with wistful nostalgia.

Lampoon 31, the Editor’s Letter: Roughness, Honesty, and Sustainability

From Lampoon 31 Editor’s Letter: 

Lampoon is a rough magazine. A rough, embossed cover, preferably analogue photography, with minimal post-production. No excuses, no retouching. The same goes for writing: sixty to eighty journalists worldwide—publishing with us in English or Italian. What counts is the ability to recognise a detail. We want everything to be edgy, lean, like a natural fibre. We look for the scratch.

Lampoon’s message is clear: sustainability is the only viable form of contemporary culture. No artistic, narrative, or curatorial expression makes sense today unless it asks how we can live together without harming one another—or without thinking about how we’ll be living in July 2040.

We want reaction, conviction, illusion. We collide with walls; we plunge into abysses. We stay naïve, nostalgic, aroused, drenched, furious. We’ll embrace anything to free ourselves from the nihilism we feel when we stand there, like fools, scrolling a phone screen. Let’s use that finger for more intimate purposes. Scratching and shouting, we carry on. We will keep publishing words of honesty and roughness.