Soft tailoringTailoringThe craft of cutting, shaping, and fitting garments, especially suits, jackets, and trousers, precisely to the body. Good tailoring relies on structure, proportion, and careful hand and machine work, andGo to Tailoring Glossary, lace slips, and sculpted silhouettes—plus ‘poor’ floral fabrics from the 1950s made rich with couture intent. This is Chemena Kamali’s Chloé, a girl redefining what softness with modernity can mean. The Spring/Summer 2026 collection moved with an instinctive grace—careful tailoring and lace slips reimagined into sculpted, body-skimming silhouettes that looked to nostalgia without retreating into it.
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Kamali described her work this season as an “entre deux”—a space between couture and ready-to-wear. “It became about merging the grandeur of couture-inspired techniques with the most ordinary of cotton poplins,” she said. There was democracy in her drapingDrapingThe process of arranging and shaping fabric directly on a dress form or body to create a garment's design, rather than a flat pattern. Draping lets designers experiment with volume,Go to Draping Glossary: instinctive, not indulgent. “Spontaneous but precisely studied,” she called it, a way of shaping lightness without losing the discipline of craft. Through pleating, knotting, and wrapping, Kamali rediscovered what she termed her most personal gesture—form through movement.
In that gesture, Chloé’s past met its present. Kamali redrew floral prints from the 1950s and 1960s, layeringLayeringThe styling practice of wearing multiple garments or accessories together to create depth, texture, and warmth. Effective layering plays with proportions, lengths, and fabrics, and works in tropical climates too,Go to Layering Glossary them across ruched bustier dresses and softly swagged sarong skirts. Outerwear archetypes—trench coats, cotton jackets—were reimagined in light, swathed fabrics that seemed to hover rather than hang. There was an intimacy to the clothes, as if made in conversation with the body rather than for the runway.
The opening looks—rose-printed minis, lilac smock tops, and blue micro shorts—carried the charm of a family photo album come to life, updated with a modern ease that sidestepped sentimentality. By the finale, the house’s familiar bohemian touch resurfaced—tiered skirts, cropped blouses, flouncy coats—all softened by lace, ruffles, and crochet. But this time, “boho” felt less like a label and more like a language in a different accent.
If Chloé once stood as shorthand for bohemian femininity, Kamali’s woman now feels grounded and instinctive—a counteract against the caricature of boho itself. She’s romantic, but she’s also real. Followed, no longer floatwd. Newly aware, not nostalgic. She’s become a symbol grown past the garden.
The Chloé woman has evolved. She can still drift, but she knows where she’s going.
Photos: CHLOÊ
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