Chemena Kamali had photo books by Bettina Rheims, Francesco Scavullo, and Erica Lennard on a coffee table in the Chloé showroom. The 1980s have been making a strong showing over the last couple of days in Paris as the men’s shows wound down and couture ramped up. Equally, though, what’s inspiring Kamali lately are the young twenty-something creatives on the Chloé team and their no-rules approach to dressing. “They reject conformity totally,” she said. “It’s all about their individuality, their self-expression. They also dress up for each other, they have fun. And I think that’s really refreshing, and it also feels very Chloé.”
That sense of spontaneity came through in this pre-fall collection with unexpected combinations like the lace-trimmed slip peeking out beneath a fuzzy cropped sweater and shrunken bomber, with ribbed tights tying the look together. A basic henley was dressed up with a draped pencil skirt and leather basque belt (a game-changing accessory used throughout the lineup), while a ruffled blush pink Paloma blouse, modeled after the Chloé dress Karl Lagerfeld made for Paloma Piccaso’s wedding, was dressed down with stretch velvet stirrup pants in a bright tomato red.
As a pre-collection this season has to check a lot of boxes, Kamali noted. That means it stretched from the flou dresses that she made an early calling card to high-waisted jeans with the perfect vintage fade. There was fashion denim in the mix too: see the lookbook opening pair of jeans that is very fitted through the hips then amplifies dramatically with A-line volumes in the legs.
What’s the link between pre-fall and fall 2026, which she’ll show on the Paris runway in a little over a month? “It’s all connected,” said Kamali. “What I get as feedback is that you can mix the collections quite well, pieces from the first show with last season’s pre-collection, say.” It’s not just the young creatives in her office who can sign off on a notion like that.
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