One must enter the Chloé show in the right headspace.
It’s 9:45 a.m and you went to bed at 4 a.m? Not good. The show lights are blue fluorescents and you didn’t do a sheet mask? Nope. Your hair isn’t bosom-length waves? It’s a bob?! You have been listening to Bad Bunny and not The Rolling Stones? Actually that’s good. Party music is Chloé music.
The good news of Chemena Kamali’s Chloé is that even if you’re not Jerry Hall, who was in the FROW with her daughter Georgia May Jagger and declared Kamali’s vision “very 1970s!”, you can be a Chloé girl. Doechii was in the FROW too, and a gang of international It girls hit the runway from Alexa Chung to Petra Collins.
Do you think Alexa Chung still has her original Paddington bag?
I heard they’re sold out on The RealReal.
Looking down the front row you could see those viral platforms—now Perspex! Little lace-up heels in blush and sage. Beachy waves and braids. All little bits of gold jewelry. Every girl looks almost the same but still retains her personality. Another plus for Chemena.On a Sage carpet come all the models I was obsessed with on Tumblr: Eniko Mihalik, Meghan Collison, Marina Peres. This show would have come triple platinum on Tumblr.
A little peplum jacket in pink with florals opens the show. That style of tight jacket, almost a frock coat fused with a bustier, is becoming very popular this season. Because it’s boyish and girlish? Or because oversize everything is out in the age of Ozempic?
That is the only print of the entire collection, that one floral. Everything else is solid blocks of burgundy, faux fur, butter yellow, pale blue, a broody fuchsia. Even in just white and black, Chemena’s Chloé is spritely and whimsical, all big shoulders and teensy skirts and golden belt buckles.
Everything here looks so easy. Everyone is so beautiful. It’s like a chamomile tea. A morning looking through the frost. A walk in the woods. So pleasant and lovely.
It’s funny it took Chloé a while to get back here: to a modern Bohemia where girls are liberated and stomping. It’s also funny that in a season of scaling back, mannish tailoring, and recession indicators Chloé has avoided all the downers. This is a brand of uppers! It has that in common with the 1970s too.
