Jerry Hall proves the new cool-girl dressing works for all ages at Chloé’s latest show
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The Chloé girl is back. Both on and off the catwalk. “You’re the original Chloé girl,” the label’s new creative director, Chemena Kamali, told Jerry Hall as they embraced backstage after the former’s debut show on Thursday morning. Hall was a friend and muse to Karl Lagerfeld, who crafted the flowy Chloé look during his tenure at the brand in the 1970s. It’s a look that remains at the roots of insouciant French-girl dressing today.
For a while, Chloé has veered away from the aesthetic it was known for – most recently with Gabriela Hearst, the Uruguayan-American designer better known for her luxe take on sustainable fashion than creating clothes for carefree Parisiennes. German-born Kamali, 42, was appointed in October last year, and could hit the ground running, given that her career has already involved two stints at Chloé – her first during its last true heyday when Phoebe Philo was creative director in the early noughties.
This collection had that thrown-on, effortless feel which has become a fashion holy grail, but with a softer, more girlish tinge than the mannish tailoring usually offered as a solution for modern style. Kamali comes from Saint Laurent, where earlier this week there was a parade of pencil skirts and nipples on the catwalk. There were still nipples here, too (can we call it a trend? Will anyone actually be baring their nips in the name of fashion or is it more a symptom of the inconvenience of including a bra?) but the vibe was less sexualised, more sensual.
Tiered, sheer capes and maxi dresses swooshed down the runway, sometimes given a tougher spin with the addition of a structured cape or wide-shouldered coat, which were reminiscent of vintage styles the models might have borrowed from their mothers’ wardrobes. The jeans – patchworked, bleached flares and wide-legs – could have been pilfered from Stevie Nicks. Kamali, who has ultra-long, wavy Chloé-girl hair, wore a pair with trainers as she took her bow.
She is also a blouse obsessive, recently admitting to owning between 600 and 700 of them, and it showed: dramatic fluted sleeves peaked out from under neat herringbone jackets, and there was a gorgeous white lace one; others came in shades such as putty, taupe and dusky pink which would be kind to almost any skin tone. There was also fringing galore on supersoft leather jackets and trousers that were half leather, half acres of chiffon.
“I would love to bring back the feelings that I had when I fell in love with Chloé more than 20 years ago,” said Kamali after the show. “It’s a collection that is ultimately about intuition and freedom and female energy. I would love women to feel that because I feel it. I also dedicated this collection to the late 1970s, an era of Chloé when it was all about a natural femininity and sensuality that was effortless, but also powerful.”
Refreshingly, her bag offering ranged from tiny little party numbers to huge carry-the-kitchen-sink hobos. She also intends them to be the kind of bags that “look better over time” and aren’t simply “precious objects… you can put them down on the floor”. Bags, then, for real life not just for social media posing. Shoe-wise, anything clog or Scholl-like goes, as does a ballerina toughened up with gold discs and ankle straps. You also couldn’t miss the belts, with Chloé appearing handwritten across the waist.
If you need any instruction on how to be a Chloé girl now, simply look to her in all her incarnations at Thursday’s show, be it Hall and her daughter Georgia May Jagger laughing with fellow mother-daughter model duo Pat and Anna Cleveland. Sienna Miller nonchalantly paired an oversized leather jacket with a delicate white dress and wooden platforms on the front row, while older (and all the cooler for it) models such as Georgina Grenville, 48, and Doutzen Kroes, 39, were killing it on the catwalk in diaphanous gowns and kick-ass heeled boots.
More from the show...
