Chloé. Resort 2026 - lookbook

 

(Images:  Chloé 2025) 

As Chemena Kamali, moves between the 1970s hedonic boho chic, to the 1980s eros charged power suits to keep the Chloé's accentuated stylization of the said era's alive and well in its possible return, at least in some form of overthrowing, we'll say aesthetically at this point in time, our hyperreal 1950s redux, of burnt out Gen Xers, mortgage markets, expansive suburbia and Middle Class gentrification.  Yes, pretty much a society in decline without a counterculture to juice things up a bit, at least offer an alternative to the social collapse, and we'll take anything on the dissident menu.  When proto-Fascism and Far Right governments are forcing on us their stability over change ethos, which as we all know is running the show (without any opposition), no matter how much it's fucking everything up.  And of course Kamali is not portraying a visualized protest song with her Chloé collections, but we can romanticize on the possibility.  Can't we?

And there is no doubt, as I have quoted numerous times from the iconic Belgium fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg, who called the sweet spot of the amorous, and that hedonistic time of the 1970s through to the mid 1980s, as the era between the contraceptive pill and AIDS, where open sexuality and freedom to sleep around and enjoy intimacy without it been beamed back to you via a digital relay i.e. your phone, now seen as an odd simulacrum of commercialised sexualisation, hidden within bedrooms.

Kamali for her Resort 2026 collection has evoked the late Karl Lagerfeld's tenue with Chloé from the 1960s through to 1983, where his exuberant Chloé powersuits offered an amorous power to the 1980s woman via the Paris Fashion Week runways, but with a darker and more Avant-garde overlay, inspired by early 80s movies that encapsulated sexual tension, such as Brian de Palma's "Dressed to Kill" (1980) and the amazing, you must see this movie, "Variety" (1983); which offers, in my opinion, an early insight into how a neurodivergent woman views sexuality.  So, Kamali's latest array is very much on par with that 1980s tenebrous impression, not overtly defined in its aesthetics as previous collections, nor "playful" as a homage to Lagerfeld, but dare I say showcasing the attractive, yet precarious fixation of one night stands, that despite the AIDS epidemic, did continue on into the late 1980s, until it began to peter out, one by one, as our parents hit the age of 40 in 1990.

In similarity to Kamali Pre-Fall 2025 collection, yet as mentioned moving into the 1980s from the late 1970s, and carrying the hedonism in tow, yet with a feeling of unease, the Resort collection showcases the same bohemian flows of the Pre-Fall collection, but with that edge of early 1980s amatory energy.  Cropped leather jackets, silks, lace, faux furs, blouses, sheer tops, knee high boots, narrow skirts, high waist lines, shoulder pads, lace and lust.  It is sex, death and thermonuclear destruction, while sipping a glass of red wine and having a cigarette.

And, yes I'll have sex tonight, as it grounds me and soothes my nervous system, risky or not.

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(A.Glass 2025)