Mix + Match series . Venice Biennale departure. MPM 96Hrs + Chanel + Jacques Marie Mage
It is late afternoon on one of those narrow Venice canals that tourists rarely find, the kind where the water barely moves and the light falls at an angle that makes everything look slightly more beautiful than it already is. The Art Biennale is winding down for the day. A couple stands on the edge of the quay with their luggage, waiting for the motoscafo that will take them to the station. Three days in Venice, the Arsenale, the Giardini, long lunches that became dinners. They look, as people often do at the end of a good trip, entirely at ease.
She is in a Chanel twin-set from the Summer 2016 collection: a dropped-waist top in ivory crepe with black geometric trim at the collar, hem, and cuffs, paired with a softly pleated midi skirt in the same ivory. The Chanel connection is worth dwelling on. The Spring Summer 2026 twin-set is openly Art Deco in its logic, the dropped waist, the horizontal banding, the severity of the trim against the softness of the pleated skirt, all of it drawn from the same 1920s vocabulary that lives in MPM's own TitanInox riveting and corner architecture.
On her face, the Jacques Marie Mage Monarch, an oversized butterfly frame in smoke crystal with gradient brown lenses.
He has kept the same navy blazer and white linen trousers he wore on arrival, with the Jacques Marie Mage Donat, dark tortoiseshell acetate with amber-brown lenses.
Both glasses with discreet ArtDeco touches on the metal reinforcements.
Between them, two MPM 96Hrs cabin trunks in black and gold TitanInox,
Geometric shape, very ArtDeco.
Eau-forte engravings all around. Unique.
their riveted shells and sides with eau-forte engravings catching the last of the canal light.
A seductive combination for several reasons at once. The most immediate is color: the black geometric trim of the Chanel twin-set finds a direct echo in the black shell of the 96Hrs, while the gold rivets and hardware of the trunks pick up the warmth running through the tortoiseshell of the Donat. The Monarch in smoke crystal bridges the ivory of the twin-set and the dark of the trunk without forcing the connection. Nothing shouts.
Then there is the question of shape and style: the dropped-waist Chanel silhouette, with its horizontal banding and architectural trim, belongs to the same Art Deco vocabulary as side reinforcements of the Jacques Marie Mage sunglasses and the 96Hrs riveted corners, its reinforced edges, its geometric panel construction. Trunk and garment were designed almost a century apart and by entirely different hands, and they are speaking the same language.
The motoscafo arrives. The trunks go in first, their black and gold sitting naturally against the varnished wood of the hull.
And they are gone, perhaps to return in two years time …
further readings :
Mix + Match series. Venice Biennale Arrival. MPM 96Hrs + Jacques Marie Mage + Riva Aquarama.
Mix + Match is an editorial proposal by Maison Philippe Montagne for the Luxury Nomad. References to third-party brands are for inspiration only and do not imply any affiliation or endorsement.
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