Photo Credit: Courtesy of Chloé
Chemena Kamali’s tenure at Chloé has been met with widespread acclaim, largely for her successful balancing act between the heritage of the brand and her own fresh perspective. A designer steeped in both the memory of the Chloé girl of the 2000s and the iconic 1970s vision by Karl Lagerfeld, Kamali has embraced these foundations while subtly reinventing them for a new generation. Her task, as always, is to balance the old with the new while responding to the rapidly changing political and economic landscapes.
Photo Credits: Courtesy of Chloé
In this fall 2025 collection, Kamali continued her exploration of how a woman’s wardrobe evolves naturally over time, echoing her thoughts from a preview interview: “You buy things throughout time, you collect them, keep them, give them away, sometimes you rediscover them.” This “rediscovery” thread ran deep throughout the collection, touching on various moments in fashion history. Kamali tapped into a posh-hippy-grunge aesthetic that captured the spirit of anti-establishment, female-led style from both the ’70s and the ’90s. It’s a culture that has influenced the work of designers like Stella McCartney and Phoebe Philo, both of whom are closely associated with Chloé and grew up immersed in vintage fashion. The spirit of those early British It girls, like Marianne Faithfull and Anita Pallenberg, was woven into Kamali’s designs, evoking a sense of lived-in, nostalgic elegance.
Courtesy of Chloé
The opening looks took us to a world where the modern-day Chloé girl might feel equally at home in the drawing rooms of an old English castle or wandering the misty moors. Victorian jackets—made from soft, cherishing fabrics—were paired with fur stoles, maxidresses, and the kind of eclectic mix of family heirlooms one might imagine hanging from a well-worn chatelaine chain. This part of the collection exuded a sense of heritage and femininity, subtly making room for pieces that seemed to belong in a wardrobe built over time.
Photo Credits: Courtesy of Chloé
Kamali’s introduction of this aristocratic, English It girl aesthetic was made more modern with the inclusion of two notable guests—Tish Weinstock and Alexa Chung—who embodied the Chloé attitude effortlessly. Both women wore the season’s more modern iteration of the brand’s iconic ballet flats and carried the reissued 2005 Paddington bag, which has been reimagined in lighter, contemporary materials. These small updates ensured that Kamali wasn’t completely lost in the nostalgia of past Chloé collections but was still keen on moving the brand forward while paying homage to the spirit of its past.
Photo Credits: Courtesy of Chloé
While her commitment to Chloé’s bohemian and romantic roots was evident, Kamali also infused the collection with her own interests—particularly an affinity for the early ’80s Karl Lagerfeld era. This period of Chloé was marked by bold silhouettes and heavy tailoring, and Kamali revived this style with elegant yet voluminous fur-lined quilted coats and structured Charles James–meets–motorcycle jackets. The collection’s foray into eveningwear brought about some of the most unexpected pieces—lace pannier dresses, with hips flounced out by micro crinolines, added a more dramatic, almost architectural element to the collection, steering away from the delicate femininity usually associated with Chloé.
Photo Credits: Courtesy of Chlóe
Perhaps the most surprising shift came toward the end of the show when Kamali transitioned from the soft-focus romanticism of Chloé into a more sharply defined ’80s aesthetic. The collection saw the introduction of heavily padded shoulders, miniskirts, and pussycat-bow blouses—a clear homage to the power dressing era of women like Nancy Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. This unexpected turn was a bold move that seemed to reference an earlier, perhaps more conservative, era, but Kamali’s irreverent take on these staples placed them firmly in a modern context.
Kamali’s exploration of historical references and gendered fashion tropes in this collection wasn’t necessarily political, even though Chloé had previously dressed prominent political figures like Kamala Harris. Instead, it was a statement on how fashion, at its best, evolves with time, reacting not just to shifting tastes, but also to the emotional weight carried by garments over time. Kamali’s collection was a reminder that clothing, like memories, is something we constantly rediscover and reinterpret.
Photo Credits: Courtsey of Chloé
In this show, Kamali skillfully navigated between nostalgia and innovation, creating a collection that was both timeless and timely—one that challenged Chloé’s legacy while ensuring it remained grounded in its distinctive identity. The result? A celebration of the evolving Chloé woman who embraces both the past and the present with equal measure.
