A Fine Winter According to Chanel

For its 2026 End of Year campaign for watches and fine jewellery, Chanel ventures into an imagined winter landscape. An original score by British musician Sampha brings a touch of warmth to a season given to spectacle.

Two friends find an egg in the snow and set off to bring it home. It’s an unlikely centrepiece for a Chanel watches and fine jewellery campaign, and that’s part of its charm. The house asked Sampha to write the music for the film, his first original score for Chanel.

Chanel has long understood what a small object can hold. In 1932, Gabrielle Chanel presented Bijoux de Diamants, her first and only high jewellery collection. Among its motifs was the comet, a flash of light translated into diamonds. The idea was to dress women in constellations. Nearly a century later, the motif still appears in Chanel’s Comète collection, where a comet can curl around a wrist or come to rest at the nape of the neck. There is a similar pleasure in the scale of the new film. The landscape is vast, and the whole story turns on something small enough to hold in a hand.

Sampha’s own work makes him a fitting collaborator. His 2023 album Lahai takes its name from his paternal grandfather, whose name he also carries as his middle name. Made in the wake of becoming a father, the album considers how people are connected across generations. That preoccupation with what we receive, carry and pass on gives some context to his role here. Composed alongside the film, the score accompanies a story in which care is expressed through the ordinary work of helping someone along.

The film also makes room for a feeling that rarely gets much attention in holiday advertising. Anyone who has spent December trying to find the right precious thing for someone will recognise how much of a gift lies in the time spent thinking about it. Chanel gives that time to its two travellers. The egg is something they could have walked past. The story begins because they stop.