Chloé

Since its founding in 1952, by Gaby Aghion and Jacques Lenoir, Chloé has always been a brand with an inherent exaltation of feminine freedom; something reinforced by Chemena Kamali’s debut fall 2024 collection for the French maison, with its focus on easy-but-glam blouses, sexy and tough thigh-high boots, and terrific denim that mirrors the designer’s own personal style. It’s a “homecoming” of sorts for the German designer, who landed her first internship at the maison in the early aughts, and later worked as the design director. “It was like this world was opening up in front of me. It was really like, Okay, this is where I belong. [It was one of] those decisive moments, when you connect to something that you feel is intuitively right,” she said of her first experiences at the house.

Kamali is following on the footsteps of Aghion, who pioneered the idea of luxury prêt-à-porter, filling the space between haute couture and the more casual clothes that were readily available in stores, with feminine clothes in soft silhouettes that rejected the stiff silhouettes typical of the era. Aghion’s first fashion show took place at the Café de Flore, a restaurant then-frequented by the intellectuals who had made the Left Bank their home.

A little over a decade later, Aghion hired Karl Lagerfeld to become the maison’s creative director in 1964. In the 1970s his collections for Chloé became some of the most influential in the industry, helping popularize the “Soft Look” that defined the era, with soft voluminous layers in light as air fabrics that were hyper-feminine. Lagerfeld left in 1983, and in 1987, Martine Sitbon was named to the top job. In the five years she was at the label, she injected it with a youthful energy which set the tone for the decades that followed. Lagerfeld then briefly returned to Chloé in 1992.

It was a fresh-out-of-school Stella McCartney, named as Lagerfeld’s successor in 1997, who reimagined Chloé’s feminine savoir faire for a new generation. Her collections had a distinct rock roll energy that mixed tailoring pieces that emphasized women’s curves, with frilly barely-there dresses and a cheeky sense of humor (a now-legendary 2001 collection featured a t-shirt with the slogan “Keep Your Bananas Off My Melons”). When McCartney left to launch her namesake label she was replaced by Phoebe Philo who had been her design assistant during her tenure. Philo’s debut collection for spring 2002 showcased a softer, more bohemian side, establishing babydoll dresses, cotton eyelet, and wooden platforms as the house’s new signatures, which would become the defining pieces of the early aughts.

Continuing the tradition of hiring young female designers to steer the brand, Hannah MacGibbon became creative director in 2009, followed by Claire Waight Keller in 2011, Natacha Ramsay-Levi in 2017, and Gabriela Hearst in 2020. Hearst’s debut fall 2021 collection incorporated recycled cashmere, organic cotton, and reworked vintage bags, all of which reduced the collection’s environmental footprint by a reported 400%. Through her stewardship, Chloé was able to achieve B Corp status, a certification that evaluates a company’s practices across different fields including governance, their workforce, customer service practices, environmental impact, and how they interact with their community.