“It needs to feel sincere, real, and functional.” On a spring morning in Paris last week, Chemena Kamali was introducing the ethos of the first collection she designed for Chloé, which was pre-fall 2024. Sort of back-to-front, it’s now being made public two months after her enthusiastically-applauded debut runway show for fall. There’s no accounting for the quirks of fashion schedules, but the logic of this one makes sense: It’s near the impending first Kamali-designed delivery; our first chance for a close examination of what we can get our hands on soon.
She was walking the talk, dressed in a pair of high-waisted wide-denims, an epauletted navy silk crepe blouse, and a string of fine gold pendants, with a metallic snake belt looped around her jeans. “I really was thinking a lot about the Chloé wardrobe, what it should consist of, just, quite frankly, why do I want to wear it? What do I think is important to have in terms of essential pieces, things that go well with other silhouettes that you have at home already?” In the showroom on the Rue de la Baume, sunlight was streaming in from balconies over the street as she strolled over to a board pinned with the photos you see here.
The similarities between the creative director’s own style and that of the tousled long-haired models in her pre-fall lookbook (not to mention the Paris balcony setting) are almost as one.
That’s the advantage of female-led design in a house devoted to translating women’s instincts into action, of course—plus, the layers and nuances of familiarity with the house history and iconography that Kamali is bringing with her. Her ‘mood’ and image-making—the Chloé It-Girl for the 2020s—are relatable and referenced on-point. It’s the balance of carefree
romance and pragmatism that’s run through the house since Karl Lagerfeld’s tenures in the ’70s, ’80s, and late ’90s; what Stella McCartney, Phoebe Philo, and Hannah McGibbon ignited in the aughts: Kamali has no need to study this. The spirit is at her fingertips—the balcony scene, for example, she said, is an echo of a Lagerfeld for Chloé advertising shoot from some time in the ’80s.
But brands these days often market the glow of campaign imagery, and leave it at that. As caught as your eye may be, that still leaves a customer wondering what you’ll actually find in stores. Well, as evidenced by the clothes and accessories that she’d lined up on rails in coherent looks, Kamali is not going to allow Chloé to be one of those situations. She’s worked through the possibilities of how x will go with y and z, as well as a, b, and c. How items cross-translate into the formal informality that can function for work, celebrations, dinners, commutes, and unpredictable weather. Where, for example, would you think to go to find something to wear to a wedding or a funeral, without having to buy an expensive one-wear thing that doesn’t adapt to anything else in life?