Chemena Kamali came out of the starting blocks as Chloé’s creative director with a clear agenda: To “make people aware again” of the brand’s DNA, forged strongly by founder Gaby Aghion herself, and exalted magnificently by Karl Lagerfeld during his two stellar tenures at the French house, which Kamali knows by heart. (She worked at Chloé twice previously in her career, under Phoebe Philo and Clare Waight Keller, before nabbing the top job roughly one year ago.)
Her debut runway show last September was a hit and her sophomore effort was another winner, executed in a softer, more delicate and sun-kissed register.
Everything about her show on Thursday morning spoke to an uplifting, dreamy femininity, from Elizabeth Fraser’s angelic vocals on the soundtrack to the bright, airy show set at the Tennis Club de Paris, the rafters spilling tropical plants and the models emerging from behind a wall of glass bricks lit yellow from behind.
It coaxed real smiles and palpable delight among the front-row Chloé girls — Sienna Miller, Natalia Vodianova, Liya Kebede and Jessica Miller among them — who looked very much at home in their frilly blouses, high-waisted flares and platform clogs.
You didn’t need gold-script logo belts to identify these clothes as Chloé: the frothy and romantic lace blouses; the diaphanous point d’esprit prairie dresses, and the killer pantsuits with a slightly raised waist that looked so fantastic on U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris during the Democratic National Convention.
Once again, the designer drew ideas from the archive — Aghion’s bubble shape from the late ’50s; floral prints, lingerie looks and delicate lace from the late ‘70s, her go-to decade — and gave her own spin, parading oddball bloomers that gathered above the ankle, boyish bubble shorts and lace-trimmed henley knits, an item you sense fills many of her dresser drawers.
She also interpreted puff-sleeved blouses into meaty chore jackets and cropped suede toppers with ramrod shoulders and a curtain-draped back. They were commanding and pretty at the same time.
During a preview at Chloé’s showroom, Kamali talked about the “fantasy of summer” as a way of explaining her clam-shaped leather shoulder bags, the leather strap festooned with gold charms of broken shells, stones and familiar brand talismans like bananas.
There were dollops of humor in the flamingo fronting a one-piece swimsuit, or the golden horse head poking out from one corner of a hobo bag. The shoes were fun, messages chipped into tall wooden platform shoes like lovesick teenagers scar a tree.
Kamali received rapturous applause as she bounded out in her wide-legged jeans, sneakers and trim blouse, looking every inch a Chloé girl herself.
At a time when fashion’s game of musical chairs is playing out on social media as some entertaining blood sport, it’s heartening to hear a designer being cheered on for a change.
