July 9, 2025 |
For spring 2026, Chloé splits itself between movie screens and silhouettes pulled from the early ‘80s as a springboard, looking at the high-gloss seduction of Hollywood noir and the stripped-down realism of feminist indie film.
In the lookbook, creative director Chemena Kamali foregrounds a Chloé woman who fluctuates between fantasy and vérité. It feels something like De Palma’s femme fatale wandering into Bette Gordon’s grainy Variety caught mid-reframe – these aren’t objects of desire, but authors of it. Sleek silhouettes – starring grey suiting with oversized assertive shoulders (a nod to the house’s Lagerfeld era) – are cinched into feminine proportions and pulled at the waist into a peplum. Then, where a pencil skirt or two might feel fitting, capris are donned instead, either in a deep blue denim, inky black suit-iterations or deep teal cropped just above strappy T-bar sling backs.
Elsewhere blazers, bombers and faux shearling peacoats are styled boxy or shrugged off the shoulder, often layered over sheer slips and gauzy shirting. The clothes swing between sculpted and undone – high-waisted, cropped, or slashed just so – with that off-kilter polish Kamali often showcases.
Creamy brown leather clogs return, reimagined as thigh-highs climbing up the leg, with golden oak heels and styled alongside silky dresses and glints of golden hardware – a maison staple, sculpted here by Kamali with near cinematic conviction. There are ankle-skimming slipper clogs too – now with bubblegum pink or lime green soles that pop against the neutrals.
To break up the otherwise wintry palette, saturated reds, cobalt and noir punctuate the assortment, while exuberant prints nod to the overstimulated styling of ‘80s screen sirens. Beauty, of course, remains unfussed: makeup is minimal, hair left artfully tousled – an undone elegance that suggests not effortlessness, but agency.
Johnny Dufort’s lookbook imagery – starring Lily McInerny and a cast of chameleonic muses (the Chloé Paddington included) – toys with angles and storied silver screen atmospheres like a sort of controlled voyeurism. Each frame splits between being seen and seeing, following Kamali’s central ordeal: who really holds the gaze?
It’s a nostalgic characterisation of the Chloé archetype, clad in gender contradictions and a heroine of her own making. Like any great film, this season Kamali leaves you wanting both to be the leading lady and to watch it all over again.
Photography by Johnny Dufort.
