Few trends have been rebranded for the mainstream quite like “boho”.
Yet at the Chloé show inParis, on day three of its fashion week, creative director, Chemena Kamali, doubled down on her efforts to push her easy breezy coolness and cash registers in the most relaxed way possible. She doesn’t mind the word, but prefers to describe her clothes as “romantic”.
Under the domed roof of the Tennis Club de Paris, with long blondes Jerry Hall and Georgia May Jagger on the front row, the German-born designer sent out a soothing procession of ruffled blouses, ballet flats and gold Chloé logo belts.
Big soft totes came laden with charms, and trousers were wide-legged and low slung. Fashion loves to throw a new erogenous zone into the ether until one sticks. At Dries Van Noten it was the left shoulder, and at Chloé it’s the midriff. As with almost every show so far, faux fur was everywhere. A little bitOphelia in the brook, a little bit whimsical 70s, it was hard not to argue that boho was back. Again.
Both the high street, where Marks & Spencer has seen a reported and inconceivable 9,633% increase in searches for “boho styles”, and in popular culture, where boho is the unofficial wardrobe of the tradwife, it’s one of the few trends to skip seamlessly between generations. Love it or hate it, at a time when fashion is frantic for new silhouettes, subversive designs and viral moments, doing something familiar – and easy to wear – is a welcome surprise. Plus it sells – in the first year since she joined the brand, annual sales shot up 26.9%.
Speaking backstage after the show, the German-born designer said she wanted to help women avoid “overthinking how they get dressed”. As a woman gets older her wardrobe changes, she said. Stating the obvious perhaps, but it’s also true in the everyday: “women are not always the same, we have shifting moods, and feelings and clothes need to reflect that”.
The standout piece was a slip dress, cut on the bias, which came in pastel shades. In the dressing-up box of some of the most famous women in the world – Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy regularly wore Calvin Klein, while a freshly divorced Princess Diana turned up at the 1996 Met Ball wearing a dress by Dior – today, it was modelled by Alexa Chung. In Paris, home of the “cinq à sept”, slip dresses are more for the everyday. Wearing flats and a faux fur coat with hers, it managed to lampoon the line between public and private dressing, while being a little bit sexy too.
Chloé the label was originally founded in 1952 by the French fashion designer Gaby Aghion because she wanted something easy to wear (not possible in 1950s Paris). She created a brand, named it after a friend and in turn, created an archetype: the “Chloé girl”. Under various designers, including Phoebe Philo and most recently the Uruguayan designer Gabriela Hearst, her identity has shifted depending on who was sketching. But she’s endured.
Kamali, who previously worked at Chloé under Philo in the 2000s and Clare Waight Keller in the 2010s, has been something of a revelation in the fashion industry, giving women clothes they clearly craved. This has been particularly true after the spate of appointments of white male designers in womenswear.
If designers are the face of their label, or at least its most visible representation, running out for her end-of-show bow in loose trousers, a little lace vest, her long hair worn down, Kamali looked more like Chloé’s protagonist.