Chemena Kamali

Chemena Kamali returned to Chloé as creative director in October 2023, twenty years after first entering its studio as an intern. She had also worked there under Clare Waight Keller before a seven-year stretch at Saint Laurent. Her first collection, shown in February 2024, revived the airy blouses, low waists and flounced dresses long associated with Chloé. (Richemont; Chloé)

Kamali knows the house from the workroom as well as the archive. Under Phoebe Philo and later Waight Keller she learned how Chloé’s soft clothes are built; at Saint Laurent she worked with a stricter silhouette. Her own collections bring those experiences together: loose silk and ruffles held in check by a purposeful shoulder, boot or belt. (W Magazine)

From Trier to the Chloé studio

Kamali was born in Germany in 1981 and trained first at Trier University of Applied Sciences, then took a Master of Arts in Fashion at Central Saint Martins in London under the course's influential director, Professor Louise Wilson, graduating with distinction in 2007. (Hochschule Trier; Business of Fashion)

She had already worked at Chloé by then. In 2003, aged twenty-two and fresh out of her undergraduate degree, she joined Phoebe Philo's studio as an intern. The soft jersey and delicate cotton of that period stayed with her. (W Magazine)

After Central Saint Martins she worked in Milan, at Alberta Ferretti and Strenesse, before Chloé brought her back in 2012 as design director under Clare Waight Keller. She spent roughly four years working on Waight Keller's collections. That studio role matters when attributing a garment: Kamali helped make the clothes, but Waight Keller directed the line. (W Magazine; British Vogue)

The Saint Laurent years

In 2016 Kamali left for Saint Laurent, becoming women's ready-to-wear design director under Anthony Vaccarello. She stayed until her return to Chloé in 2023. She has described those years as an education in discipline and sharpness, qualities she could bring to Chloé's looser silhouette. (W Magazine; Chloé)

Announcing her appointment, Kamali said: "My heart has always been Chloé's. It has been since I stepped through its doors more than 20 years ago. Returning feels natural and very personal. I am extremely honoured to be taking on this role and to be building on the vision that Gaby Aghion and Karl Lagerfeld defined early in the Maison's history." Aghion founded Chloé in Paris in 1952; Lagerfeld was its principal designer from 1964 to 1983 and again from 1992 to 1997, the two tenures most closely associated with the silk blouses and romantic proportions Kamali would draw on for her own debut. (Chloé; Chloé history)

Silk blouses, low waists and the Paraty

Kamali's first collection for Chloé, shown in Paris on 29 February 2024 and titled the Intuition Collection, drew directly on Lagerfeld's late-1970s work for the house: sheer silk blouses with ruffles and flounce, hip-slung trousers, tap-shorts and cape coats over sheer maxi dresses and babydolls. It was read almost universally as a homecoming rather than a reinvention, reasserting the "Chloé girl" silhouette that had defined the label's commercial identity for three decades. (W Magazine)

She brought back the Paraty bag, with its curved handle and trapezoidal body, and sent out broad belts with the house name in looping gold script. The Paraty was first introduced in 2008. Its return suited a collection that drew on familiar Chloé shapes without presenting them as untouched vintage. (W Magazine)

Chloé Arts and an inherited idea of female empowerment

On 25 June 2024, a few months after her debut, Kamali launched Chloé Arts, a programme built to celebrate women artists and create conversations between fashion and other creative fields. Its first edition presented eight large-scale paintings by the Danish artist Mie Olise Kjærgaard, depicting women at the moment of shedding a physical restriction — the corset, in favour of a bicycle, a tennis racket, a musical instrument — at the Chloé flagship on Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris. Kamali said of the pairing: "Chloé is about intuition, freedom, and the celebration of women. Mie's work speaks to all these elements." (Chloé; Whitewall)

Through Chloé Arts, Kamali also gave the house a regular platform for women artists. The programme began in June 2024 with work by eight artists, alongside the clothes rather than as a one-off runway prop. (British Vogue; The Impression)

Building a Chloé wardrobe

Kamali's subsequent collections have stayed close to the register she established in February 2024 rather than moving through a sequence of distinct themes. Her Autumn/Winter 2026 collection, which reached Chloé's boutiques and website in September 2026, worked a folkloric vocabulary — Tyrolean-inflected knits, prairie blouses, high-necked dresses, fold-over cavalier boots and swashbuckling coats drawn again from the Lagerfeld archive — around the idea, in her words, of "how clothing can both hold emotion, and carry memory." As of September 2026 she remains Chloé's creative director. (AnOther)

Labels, dating and how to read the work

The single most useful fact for dating a Chloé garment against Kamali's career is that she has held three different relationships to the house's design, each producing different attribution. Pieces from her first stint, as an intern from 2003, were not authored by her at all. Pieces from 2012 to 2016 were made under her hand in the studio but under Clare Waight Keller's creative direction — they are Waight Keller's collections, not Kamali's, whatever her level of involvement. Only work from her debut collection onward, shown 29 February 2024, can be attributed to Kamali as creative director.

That debut date also creates a retail overlap worth knowing about. Gabriela Hearst's final collection for Chloé was Spring/Summer 2024, which continued arriving in stores through the early months of Kamali's tenure; a Chloé garment bought new in the first half of 2024 is not automatically a Kamali design. Checking the season code on the care label against a collection's known show date is the reliable way to place a specific piece, since retail delivery dates lag well behind the runway calendar that determines who designed a garment.

Archive reissues add a second layer. A Paraty bag bought today may be Kamali's 2024 reintroduction of a 2008 design rather than either a period-original or a wholly new object, and its hardware, lining and construction details typically differ from the earlier version even where the silhouette is unchanged. Where a listing does not specify a season, comparing these details against Chloé's own product photography from the relevant collection is the most dependable way to tell an original from a reissue.

References

• British Vogue. "Chemena Kamali on Chloé." October 2024.
• Richemont. "Chloé announces the appointment of Chemena Kamali as Creative Director." 9 October 2023.
• Chloé. "Chemena Kamali joins Chloé as Creative Director." 9 October 2023.
• Chloé. "Story." House history and creative director timeline.
• Chloé. "The launch of Chloé Arts." 25 June 2024.
• Whitewall. "Chloé Arts Launches in Paris to Empower Female Talent." 2024.
• Hochschule Trier. "Success Stories." Fashion department alumni profile.
• Business of Fashion. "Chemena Kamali." BoF 500 profile.
• W Magazine. "At Chloé, Chemena Kamali Finds Freedom in the Past." 2025.
• W Magazine. "Inside Chemena Kamali's Chloé Debut: Flounce, Frou, and a Whole Lot of 'It' Bags." February 2024.
• Emily Chan. "How Chloé Became The It-Girl Brand Of 2024." British Vogue, 14 December 2024.
• The Impression. "The Fashion Awards 2024 Winners." 2 December 2024.
• AnOther. "Chemena Kamali Shows Us What Chloé Was, Is, And What It Could Be." 2026.