Chemena Kamali’s Chloé era has been welcomed with such warmth that you can only imagine the whiplash she might be going through. She’s been applauded as the sister who’s brought alive the much identified-with memory of the ‘Chloé girl’ of the 2000s, as well as for her fluent revamps of the foundational floaty 1970s Karl Lagerfeld era. Kamala Harris wore several Chloé trouser suits during her presidential campaign. Yet Kamali also shares the burden of the questions that crouch on the shoulders of every designer: how did you do versus what we loved last season, and how does it look against the rapidly shifting political and economic scenery?
Kamali hinted at some of those pressures in a preview, saying that in reviewing the past year, she wanted to get away from “the Chloé stereotype” and make it broader. Then she offered the kind of conversation about clothes that you only get from a woman designing for women. “In a way, a woman’s wardrobe evolves naturally over time. It’s un-curated. You buy things throughout time, you collect them, keep them, give them away, sometimes you rediscover them.”
Agreed: though there were themes at work here. Partially, Kamali’s ‘rediscovery’ thread lead back to the conflation of the posh-hippy-grunge anti-establishment female-led style which spanned the ’70s and ’90s. Both Stella McCartney and Phoebe Philo (formerly Chloé’s creative directors) grew up around this fashion culture, rag-picked for vintage nighties and Victoriana on Portobello Road market, and made great friends of Marianne Faithfull and Anita Pallenberg, the original 1960s girls who set styles just by wearing old stuff that they rated.
For a start, this led Kamali to “a feeling of Britishness, old aristocracy—she’s in her castle,” meaning someone who will throw together “cherished historical” Victorian jackets, haul out great-granny’s fur stoles, and make maxi-dresses of her slips and nightgowns, whilst festooning herself with family bits-and-bobs of jewelry on chatelaine chains.
All of this went on in the opening scenes. Momentarily there, what with all the dangling fake fur tails bouncing around, it did make you think of a bunch of small animals scurrying about: this is a problem every castle-dweller lives with, after all. Underlining the modern English It-girlness, Kamali had the aristocratic Tish Weinstock (British Vogue’s beauty editor, and author of How to Be a Goth: Notes on Undead Style) and Alexa Chung walking—noticeably wearing Chloé’s new ballet flats instead of the humungous wooden wedges of the aughts. Both were carrying the re-issued, though technically lighter 2005 Paddington Bag, the Philo-era It-Bag.
But what Kamali brings of her own perspective on fashion now is her interest in the early-’80s Karl Lagerfeld Chloé. She pointed to boards of his shows where dolman-sleeved full skirted leather coats twirled the runway.
That era was fully present in her hefty ‘fur’ lined quilted coats and a couple or Charles James-meets-motorcycle jackets. She also pushed evening silhouettes further in an interesting way in lace pannier dresses, the hips flounced out with micro crinolines.
And then the actual surprise of the show: Kamali shifted from soft-focus romantic Chloé to the vastly shoulder-padded, miniskirted early ’80s. Kamali isn’t a political designer (even though she’s been worn by such a notable Democratic politician), but nevertheless, those kinds of pussy-cat bow blouses were, in their day, so much the domain of conservative women—Nancy Reagan and Margaret Thatcher—that the thought of it sent a bit of a shiver.
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