Chloé Spring 2026: Hanging With Drapes

“How would a Chloé girl wear a couture dress today?” Chemena Kamali, the house’s creative director, said just before the show, answering her own question. “She would wear it in cotton, and she would wear it without the lining.”

Since arriving at the creative helm of the Paris house two years ago, Kamali has set about reaffirming Chloé’s sunny nonchalance, natural femininity and youthful elan, leaning into the archive and particularly Karl Lagerfeld’s epic tenure in the late ’70s and ’80s.

Now she’s starting to introduce more of herself, for spring tapping into skills she gained early in her career working for the likes of Alberta Ferretti.

“I’m a 3D flou designer from the very, very beginning,” she related during a preview. “Draping is almost easier for me than sketching.”

Cue the dense swags of floral-printed cotton that Kamali draped into skirts, baby-doll dresses and swimsuit-like tops. These were meant to evoke what Chloé might look like incorporating couture techniques.

A pioneer in luxury ready-to-wear, Chloé founder Gaby Aghion created her first collection in 1952, staging shows at Café de Flore and Brasserie Lipp.

“She thought was rigid and stiff and elitist, but on the other hand, she was sort of inspired by couture silhouettes and by draping and pleating,” Kamali related.

Here’s another designer deliberately using humble fabrics, mostly cotton, to blunt the grandeur of her draped and smocked silhouettes. The vintage florals and all the swimsuit details had a perfume of Miami in the 1950s, not always in the best sense.

Kamali then segued into plainer looks in more typical, softer Chloé neutrals, including some pretty cocoon-shaped coats and cropped blouses, though some of looks bordered on bunchy.

Still, kudos to Kamali for taking a risk and stretching the boundaries of the brand, in the spirit of its feisty founder.