For Spring 2027, The Designer Follows Her Favorite Fixations — From Lingerie And Tailoring To Rebellious Women — And Lets Instinct Lead The Way
By Mackenzie Richard Zuckerman
In Conversation With The Impression
Speaking with The Impression following Chloé’s Spring 2027 collection, creative director Chemena Kamali discusses the personal fixations that shaped the season, her instinctive approach to the Chloé archive, and the independent women whose contradictions continue to inspire her.
The Impression Intelligence
Creative Director: Chemena Kamali
House: Chloé
Collection: Spring/Summer 2027
Presented: Paris Fashion Week
Interview: Mackenzie Richard Zuckerman for The Impression
Key Themes: Femininity, lingerie, tailoring, transparency, archival Chloé, independence
See the Spring 2027 Collection
Chemena Kamali talks about clothes the way some people talk about old songs: one memory brings up another, a detail sends her somewhere unexpected, and suddenly she is three references away from where the conversation began.
It suits Chloé. Since taking the creative reins of the house, Kamali has built her world less around grand declarations than around a very personal accumulation of things she has loved for years — women, music, old photographs, lingerie, tailoring, archival Chloé, and the kind of femininity that can look soft at first glance and turn out to have considerably more nerve.
For Spring 2027, she allowed those interests to come closer together.
Kamali calls them her “creative fixations,” and there is something revealing in the phrase. These are not seasonal obsessions picked up for effect and discarded six months later. They are the ideas she circles back to, the images that stay lodged in her mind, the women whose stories continue to interest her long after the clothes have left the runway.
I have all of these creative fixations. Things that I’ve always loved, things that I always return to.
That returning has become central to the way she works at Chloé. She looks backward, but rarely in a dutiful way. The archive is not a syllabus. A 1972 Chloé design with scalloped edges can reappear simply because she has never stopped thinking about it. A neckline can become worthy of its own investigation. A piece of music can lead her toward a woman whose life interests her as much as her image.
Kamali is a collector of those connections.
For Spring, that meant flowers and embroidery, lingerie and transparency, tailoring and an almost gleeful amount of attention paid to necklines. High necks, square necks, plunging ones, softened ones — she talks through them with the enthusiasm of someone who has clearly been enjoying herself.
“I really wanted to explore all of my favorite segments,” she says.
Her materials roam just as freely, from nylon and leather to sheer layers that expose the construction underneath. Fluidity is important to her, but so is structure. The clothes can drift and then suddenly snap back into shape.
That push and pull mirrors the women Kamali returns to as references.
She is less interested in a single Chloé archetype than in women who contain several personalities at once: romantic and rebellious, polished and slightly undone, sensual without being fragile. She talks about contradiction often, and about resisting stereotypes in favor of something messier and more recognizable.
The women who stay with her are rarely interesting simply because they were beautiful. She wants the backstory.
Who were they? What did they choose? Why did they choose it? What were they up against?
“What was their pathway? Why did they take the decisions that they took? And it’s not always easy. I think it’s very inspiring.”
One of the women connected to the soundtrack appealed to Kamali for exactly that reason: she was provocative in her time, judged heavily, and still stayed true to herself. Kamali speaks about her with an admiration that goes beyond style. She likes women who hold their ground.
That spirit runs through her Chloé as much as the lace and floating dresses do.
The romance is still there, of course. It would hardly be Chloé without it. But Kamali’s version of femininity has never been particularly interested in behaving itself. The lingerie, transparency and flowers are balanced by tailoring, leather and a tougher attitude underneath.
The collection may begin with familiar fixations, but Kamali keeps them alive by letting them collide.
At this point in her Chloé tenure, the most interesting part of the story is not simply what she loves.
It is how many things she manages to love at once.