The Chloé SS27 collection arrived weighted with a particular kind of meaning, because Chemena Kamali SS27 Chloé may, if the Paris rumour mill proves correct, be her final collection for the house. Whether or not that is true, she showed as though she believed it: this was a collection of deep fixations rather than new proposals, a designer drilling to the very centre of what Chloé has always been.
An Archive Reckoned With, Not Merely Referenced
‘This season felt very free,’ Kamali said of the collection. The freedom she is describing is not the freedom of a designer loosened from constraint, but of one who has stopped second-guessing her own instincts. She returned to the Chloé archive with intention: a scallop-edged embroidery from a Karl Lagerfeld trouser suit of 1972 was revived, and 3D flower embroideries from the 1960s became the architecture for halter-neck maxi dresses and baby doll silhouettes, both charming and precise. The workmanship, she said, was ‘couture level savoir faire’, and one believed her. There is a particular quality of finish that distinguishes embroidery worn as decoration from embroidery that is doing structural and emotional work. This collection had the latter.
Lavish fringing and lace opened the show; delicate lace and chiffon bodysuits paired with ball skirts closed it. Between those two poles, Kamali mapped out a very particular Chloé world. ‘All I wanted to do was follow all of my obsessions I have for Chloé,’ she said, ‘all of the creative fixations that I feel through my creative process, things that I always loved. Things that I return to. I wanted to let those obsessions lead the way this season, it was very intuitive.’
What gives this statement its weight is how thoroughly she has earned it. Kamali was appointed artistic director at Chloé in 2023, according to Numéro, but her relationship with the house is far longer than that tenure suggests. She first joined Chloé in 2007 as part of Phoebe Philo’s team, as WWD notes, which means she has lived inside this DNA through several of its most defining chapters. The obsessions she speaks of are not affectations; they are the sediment of nearly two decades of looking.
Chemena Kamali SS27 Chloé: Volume, Vinyl and the Neckline as Departure Point
One of the collection’s governing decisions was technical and unusually legible: Kamali designed, as she put it, ‘from the neckline downwards.’ Jackets and macs had their necklines scooped out and squared off, creating a clear visual entry point for each look. The result was a collection where the eye moved differently than it might in a more conventional Chloé outing, where the house’s signature fluidity tends to diffuse the gaze. Here, there was an anchor.
Her second declared obsession was Chloé rainwear from the 1950s, and the results were some of the most arresting pieces in the show. Voluminous macs and clear vinyl pop-over coats produced what she described as ‘almost an X-ray effect’, the structure and detail of what lay beneath remaining visible through the outer layer. It is a device that rewards a well-made garment, and these rewarded looking. The transparent overlay also served as a kind of argument: that functionality and beauty are not in opposition, that the coat that keeps you dry need not sacrifice the dress beneath it to irrelevance.
Volume ran as a thread through the whole collection, from oversized baby doll silhouettes to cape-like coats thrown over the top of whatever came before. ‘The gesture of just throwing a cape on top of the silhouette,’ Kamali said, ‘it’s something I always love to do with something I almost love to wear myself.’ That distinction (the things a designer loves to make versus the things they reach for personally) rarely collapses so neatly. Here it did.
If the Paris rumour mill is right and this is indeed Kamali’s final collection for the house, she has left it exactly as she found its best version of itself: full of craft, full of history, and absolutely, unmistakably Chloé.
