By Kat Herriman
Chloé’s Creative Director, Chemena Kamali, flanked by models wearing looks from the Spring/Summer 25 collection.
On February 29, 2024, a flurry of Instagram activity announced the roaring return of boho chic, with the unveiling of Creative Director Chemena Kamali’s Fall/Winter collection—her first show at the helm of Chloé. Unlike other runways, the majority of imagery leaking out of Kamali’s inaugural performance wasn’t red-carpet images of A-list celebrities posted by stylists because their clients are too famous for personal Instagrams. Instead, stories and snaps came flooding out from niche It-girl accounts from what felt like every creative corner. This included artists like Rachel Rose, Petra Collins, and Chloe Wise. Entrepreneurs like Aurora James and It girls from every era: Pat Cleveland and Jerry Hall (with their daughters in tow!), and the forever free-spirited Sienna Miller. If one were to offer a heading for such a distinguished group, perhaps they’d share the bin labeled: Women To Look Up To.
Backstage at the Fall/Winter 24 Chloé show, which was Kamali’s debut for the house.
Something fresh was afoot at the storied French luxury brand, the incubator of such talents as Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney, Hannah MacGibbon, Clare Waight Keller, and Phoebe Philo (Kamali worked under the latter two at the house, early in her career). But it was one indelible image that emerged from her debut show’s favorable coverage—Kamali’s toddler son running toward her during her bow, both of their hair flying into a big Brancusi-worthy knot—that introduced an archetype we haven’t had at the head of a brand in a while: The Mother.
The image painted by Kamali’s clothes, so far, harkens back to the celebratory sense of liberty that resonated through the 1970s for women after the landmarks of Roe v Wade and Title IX. Kamali’s designs are filled with the rebellious spirit of pioneers like the late artist Paula Modersohn- Becker, believed to be the first woman to paint herself nude and pregnant, and 1920s provocateur Marie Laurencin, who unapologetically almost never depicted men in her work, showcasing women in gauzy, confection- like settings.
The house DNA is echoed as well through capes and frills—ruffles echoed across dresses and separates alike (especially Kamali’s blouses). And there is no shyness about the body: fully sheer numbers aplenty—a theme that continued into the Spring/Summer 2025 collection, where lace ruled in a sundrenched palette of white, pastels, and various nudes. Boldly titled “The Freedom Collection,” Kamali’s latest Spring/Summer show carried on the optimism carved out in her first. The vibes called to mind the paintings of Laurencin and Brittany Murphy’s whimsically iconic wardrobe as the babysitter in the early-aughts flick Uptown Girls, which immortalized a certain kind of bohemian ideal of effortless layering of romantic staples. It would be easy to picture Kamali’s silk bubble-hemmed dresses in Murphy’s fictional closet. In fact, the entire collection strikes balletic notes, as did the runway show’s glowing gridded backdrop, which was reminiscent of the set for Glass Pieces (1983), choreographer Jerome Robbins’s canonical tribute to Philip Glass.
Far from the sobriety of quiet luxury, Kamali is staking out a space for an unapologetic girly-girl who knows her history. Nods to the designers who have come before her: Philo’s minimalist economy; McCartney’s rock, romance, and playful pop references (especially this season); and Lagerfeld’s power dressing—particularly from 1977—are all masterfully interwoven into Kamali’s work at Chloé.
This is what makes her new tenure so compelling: unlike many, she’s not attempting to rewrite Chloé’s story in her name—although she did introduce nameplate belts in her own handwriting script. Instead, Kamali is walking us through the story of the brand while adapting the vision set forth in 1952 by its founder Gaby Aghion, the late Egyptian-French designer who pioneered the concept of prêt-à-porter, to describe the nature of her clothes, which were meant to work and move in. In Aghion’s day, the advent of ready-to-wear heralded the birth of a new woman whose needs were no longer being met by couture: She wasn’t a debutante; she was an individual, a creator, a worker, someone out in the world who wanted to bejewel the everyday with glamour.
Kamali’s customer is a descendant of this trailblazer. Her patrons are a class of women coming into their own wealth, raised on equal parts Sex and the City, Girls, and Euphoria. They are cosmopolitan by instinct, and weaponize their imaginations to manifest big, bountiful lives. They aren’t beholden to trends, but rather are collectors of heirlooms. When they invest in a garment, it is because it festoons their personal mythology, thickens the plot. This is perhaps why the breakaway pieces from Kamali’s first year feel fitting for a main character: nautilus-shaped bags; long, dangling amulets plunging into low necklines; see-through bloomers; lingerie-inspired separates in a sun-faded sherbet rainbow. Nothing feels borrowed from the boys. Instead, it feels like a vacation from them—a place where one can get reacquainted with one’s own energy without the suffocation of the male gaze.
In the show notes for The Freedom Collection, Kamali wrote: “I wanted to capture that longing for summer and the way summer makes you feel… capturing that fantasy moment of the summer months when you reconnect with yourself. The leaving and coming back. When you pause, escape, explore, discover, and recharge.”
Kamali is not simply offering her patrons clothes, but also a state of mind to occupy as they face down the challenges that lie ahead. For her part, Kamali is making clothes at Chloé that refuse to let women forget how far we’ve come—and the imaginative work there still is to do.
