Why Chanel’s Low-Key Boat Race Move Was Actually Chic As Hell

A Rowing Vet Turned Fashion Journalist Weighs In

I’ve got a soft spot for rowing. In 2010, I rowed for the U.S. Navy in Kiel, Germany after the annual BALTOPS exercise. After a sweaty few weeks of drills in the Baltic, our ship, the USS Mount Whitney, pulled into Kiel Week, this massive sailing and culture festival—where I found myself sliding into a rowing shell for a friendly (but very real) race against foreign forces. The blisters were medieval, the camaraderie was intense, and the adrenaline? That shit was pure, high-grade chaos. I’ve never felt more alive or more close to vomiting.

So when I saw Chanel was sponsoring the 2025 Boat Race that happened last Sunday, my first thought wasn’t “Why?” It was: Of course they did.

The Boat Race

What made it chic wasn’t bells, whistles, or budget. It was how completely unbothered and precise it was.

They didn’t try to hijack the Boat Race. No glossy campaign. No social media blitz. No tweed-clad TikTokers hashtagging #ChanelBeauty from the riverbank like a fashion PR has a gun to their heads. They just… showed up. Quietly. Elegantly. Very Demure. Very Mindful. Like they knew they didn’t need to announce themselves because if you know, you know.

And that, in 2025, is the real flex.

Here’s what I think: we’re not witnessing the death of loud luxury. We’re seeing the rise of something smarter. Brands aren’t abandoning spectacle they’re just learning when to shut up. It’s not about mass appeal anymore. It’s context over chaos. Nuance over noise. A vibe check before a media buy.

Let’s zoom out for a sec. The Boat Race, formally The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, is one of the oldest rivalries in sports. Two elite university rowing teams, eight rowers and a coxswain each, pushing it down 6.8 kilometers of the Thames between Putney and Mortlake. No prize money. No gold. Just bragging rights and a few more blisters for the collection.

It’s not a circus. There are no fireworks, no halftime stunt shows, no sponsored halftime drones. No choreographed post-race TikTok dances (though yes, they do have a TikTok account ). The whole thing is stubbornly old-school, occasionally pretentious, and extremely British. Think: linen blazers, nautical nepotism, and enough Earl Grey to drown a horse. It hasn’t changed in nearly 200 years. And that’s the magic.

Which is exactly why Chanel worked there.

This was the house’s first sports sponsorship. They could’ve gone with something flashier, something global, star studded, and algorithmically appealing. Like Louis Vuitton is doing with Formula 1.

And here’s where it gets delicious: both LV and Chanel made totally opposite choices. And both were correct.

LV x F1 is pure visual overstimulation. Champagne showers, engine roars, crypto bros with startup money and daddy issues. It’s chaos, curated. Built for the feed. Every second of it demands your attention whether you care or not. It’s very Louis Vuitton, global, flashy, culturally omnivorous, and obsessed with occupying every possible square inch of the zeitgeist.

Chanel, on the other hand, went for two elite universities rowing through grey water in coordinated outfits. Their demo? Not your average hype goblin. We’re talking Oxbridge alumni, discreetly rich people with horse teeth, Parisian women who wear a J12 to the farmers’ market, and everyone else who thinks “heritage” is a personality trait.

This wasn’t about going viral. It was about signaling and doing it with surgical precision.

Frédéric Grangié, president of Chanel Watches and Fine Jewelry, told The New York Times that the sponsorship “just happened.” No pitch decks. No synergy talk. Just vibes. And honestly, I believe him. The Boat Race is the opposite of a brand activation. It’s the kind of event you enter the way you’d enter a museum exhibit. Carefully. Quietly. With your phone on silent.

That’s the point.

We’re done with the one-size-fits-all marketing era. The smartest brands today are moving with intention. They’re not just choosing where to show up—they’re learning how. It’s less “How many impressions can we get?” and more “Can we pull this off without looking thirsty?”

Chanel didn’t try to make the Boat Race cool. They didn’t put sunglasses on the coxswains and drop a #collab. They didn’t slap a Camellia logo on the oars. They just let the event be and somehow, that made it even cooler. Because we all know what happens when brands try too hard to be relevant. Cringe collabs (looking at you, Nike x Tiffany). Influencer parades. Thirst-trap campaigns dressed up as storytelling. The energy is always a little desperate. And nothing about Chanel’s presence here felt desperate.

There was no attempt to update or repackage the event. No “Rowing, but make it fashion.” Just Chanel, standing slightly off to the side, nodding along with the tradition instead of trying to reshape it.

Compare that to LVMH’s Olympics takeover or Gucci turning horse shows into runway cosplay. Those moves were about pageantry, about staging a moment. Chanel’s was about fit.

In a perfect world that’s where luxury is moving. Not toward silence, but toward discernment. Not smaller, just sharper. Less “make it viral,” more “make it make sense.”

Chanel didn’t treat the Boat Race like a brand opportunity. They treated it like what it already was: a prestigious, weird little British ritual that didn’t need fixing. They entered like a well-mannered guest at an old-money dinner party. No DJ booth. No flash photography. No trying to rearrange the goddamn furniture.

Just presence.

And that, my friends, is chic as fuck.