Silence is Couture: Renaud Cambuzat turns Chanel Cruise into still cinema

A reflection on light and absence, Renaud Cambuzat’s contribution to Lampoon 32 SOAP investigates the language of stillness through a cinematic eye

Renaud Cambuzat’s early vision and cinematic background shaping a new language of stillness in fashion imagery

There is a kind of quiet that Renaud Cambuzat knows how to translate — the quiet of light on a wall, of air between gestures, of water before movement. His photographs have always been about this in-between space, where emotion lives just before becoming visible.

Before turning to photography, Cambuzat worked in cinema marketing — a storyteller trained to read rhythm and frame. He grew up at sea, on a boat in Southeast Asia, and that drifting childhood seems to have shaped his way of seeing: the horizon as constant, everything else in motion. When he finally picked up a camera, he did not choose to capture action but stillness — the suspended frame that cinema usually cuts away from. Today, as creative director and founder of Common Language Magazine, he moves easily between strategy and poetry, image and idea.

Light as narrative origin – how Renaud Cambuzat’s visual philosophy meets Chanel Cruise 2025/26 at Lake Como

It is light that connects Cambuzat to this chapter of fashion. Style begins where light touches material — the shimmer of tweed, the reflection of silk, the way a pearl seems to hold its own shadow. At Villa d’Este on Lake Como, the Cruise 2025/26 presentation unfolded as a dialogue between fabric and reflection.

The lake became an atelier: soft pastel tweeds, pale-yellow chiffon, liquid sequins echoing the surface of the water. The mood was neither mere Riviera nor nostalgia; it felt like the precision of a summer spent inside a dream. 

A dialogue in stillness – Chanel and Renaud Cambuzat’s shared pursuit of light, awareness, and the elegance of silence

Seen through his gaze, the Cruise 2025/26 collection turns into a meditation on presence. It speaks of leisure not as excess but as awareness: knowing how to pause, how to let light rest on skin, how to let fabric breathe. The setting of Lake Como — with its villas, marble terraces, and soft reflection — mirrors this philosophy. It is a landscape that understands silence as sophistication.

In Lampoon SOAP – Chanel Special, Cambuzat’s series becomes a continuation of the show’s own language: the lake as mirror, the photograph as echo. His work reminds us that the most radical gesture in contemporary fashion might be the refusal to shout — to let beauty whisper instead.

Credits

All looks and accessories from Chanel Cruise collection 2025.

TEAM

photography Renaud Cambuzat, styling Rikke Wackerhausen-Sejersen, hair Jesper Hallin, makeup Aurelia Liansberg, set design Chloé Guerbois, casting Ikki Casting, production Saveria Ancian, photography assistants Anthony Peyper and Igor Knevez, styling assistant Martina Ortmark, talent Camille Desjardins @women_paris.