Chemena Kamali is a generous designer, plying 25 meters of silk chiffon into a frothy underskirt, decorating blouses and vests with tiny floral motifs imperceptible on a phone screen, and researching deeply into the varied subjects that informed her charming fall collection for Chloé, from 19th-century Dutch costume and long-hair contests in Lithuania to the forever-inspiring Karl Lagerfeld era at the house.
In fact, she could draw a direct link between Lagerfeld’s knitted jackets with detached shoulder yokes from a 1978 Chloé collection and the kraplap, a traditional Dutch garment made of stiffened cotton. Kamali added such yokes to the wool blazers that opened her show.
Models whisked through a brutalist auditorium at Maison de L’UNESCO in Paris, their checkered prairie skirts whipping up the fog that leaked out from the backstage area and reached the ankles of such front-row guests as Oprah Winfrey, Brooke Shields and Aimee Lou Wood.
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With their crimped locks, as if they had just released their braids, little round sunglasses, woolen hose and Sunday-best clogs, they looked like the coolest girls exiting a Grateful Dead concert.
Also on Kamali’s mood board were pages from a book by photographer Bob Fitch, who documented and decoded hippie culture values into crisp truisms like “Hippie is a family thing.”
To be sure, the collection felt bohemian, but also very Chloé as the designer riffed on such house archetypes as capes and ponchos, bib-fronted dresses and peach-toned blouses, one turned into a grand coat with the prominent shoulders Kamali favors.
She titled her collection “Devotion,” which underscored the subliminal pagan vibe, and summed up her wish to exalt the human touch, traditional craft, and a sense of community, which is why those Dutch folk fascinated her so much.
“I saw these girls in their costumes, and basically in one outfit there was a check, a flower, an embroidery, a hand knit, a crochet,” she said. “There was something so inspiring about the richness of it, and all these different layers… You can feel it if a piece has received a lot of attention and human effort and love.”
Indeed, there was a homespun character to Kamali’s hand-knitted cardigans, dotted with pompoms and flowers, the quilted skirts and patchwork jackets.
At times, the collection was overcharged, and the show repetitive, but who can quibble with generosity?