By Seth Khouri
With or without the intention or approval of a creative director, audiences often find a certain delight in categorising a designer’s work into rigid stylistic codes, with few able to break beyond the fixed expectations of the viewer. By now, Chemena Kamali has well and truly found her footing at Chloé, presenting her third Fall/Winter offering for the label. Within this relatively short timeframe, Kamali’s collections have frequently been associated with a sense of bohemian wonder—a subcategory of ’70s-tinged, free-spirited dressing she has actively sought to distance herself from. Yet here, Kamali appears to deliver her most overtly bohemian outing yet, imbuing each aspect of the collection with a distinctly folkloric sensibility.
“For me, ‘folk’ means everything that is shared within a community, whether it’s beliefs or values, or precious hand made clothes that are passed down mother to daughter,” shared Kamali when discussing her collection. For Kamali, this materialized across the fifty-five-look collection through a series of voluminous dresses, victorian style ruffles (a continuous thread throughout this fall/winter season), heavy plaid skirts, and checkered skirting.
There was a distinct seventies sensibility at play, with Kamali’s stylistic flair coming through clearly. Look 4 showcased a yellow-and-orange checkered button-down shirt, paired with a heavy brown plaid blazer. Below, a voluminous blush-pink sheer skirt fell softly from the waist, its ruffles cascading downward. Grounding the ensemble was a pair of brown riding boots and circular-lens frames, lending the look a quiet sense of ease beneath the layered eclecticism. Its immediate successor (Look 5) offered a brief but striking moment of contrast. Here, a blue-and-white pinstripe button-down was paired with cherry-red leather trousers, secured with a black leather belt whose buckle boldly spelled out “Chloé.” The look was tucked into thigh-high brown musketeer boots lined with fur—a subtle nod to Karl Lagerfeld and his tenure at Chloé. Above, the shirt was half-concealed beneath a slate-grey blazer, its sharp shoulder pads counteracting the otherwise soft, ephemeral nature of the collection.
Early on, it became apparent that Chemena Kamali was constructing something of an emulsion of Chloé’s past codes. Western boots, clogs, micro skirts, and sweeping fur coats were reimagined across a kaleidoscope of hues, each look feeling less like direct revival and more like a refracted memory of the house’s bohemian legacy. In this sense, Kamali’s FW26 outing for the house felt like a quiet act of consolidation. Rather than resisting the bohemian associations that have long followed Chloé, she appeared to embrace them—softening, reshaping, and filtering them through her own sensibility. The result was a collection that felt both familiar and newly assured, suggesting that Kamali is no longer merely navigating the codes of Chloé, but confidently rewriting them in her own language.
