Chloe Kemana Kamali: Queen of Blouse

Bois de boulogne has a room full of blouse, on the second floor of the 19th -century villa, a child’s trumpoline and various plastic scooters for a garden residence. Hundreds of blouses.

Since the 1980s, the Victorian era has a lace blouse and a large-lump blouse. Blouse in Pasley and Leopard Prints. Blouses with familiar pedigree – Angaro, Yaves Saint Laurent, Georgio de Sant ‘Angelo – and there is no lineage with blouses. A rainbow of the blouse is arranged according to the color on a six -cloth rack.

Welcome to the mind – or, rather, Khemana Kamali, creative director of the Home Office – Chloe.

If you want to understand how, in only two sessions, he replaced Chloe with a earnest, but rapidly turned the house to wear home to one of the hottest labeled fashion, not to mention the uniform of cool girls like Suki Waterhouse and Sienna Miller (and, during their runs, Kamla Harris), you will have to understand the junoon with blouse.

She has been collecting them for 25 years and has over 1,500 blouses: at her parents’ home in Germany, storage in France, about 500 in her home alone. For him, the blouse-the relatively unpredited top, the recipient of the school uniform, the Edwardian Nanis and the 1970s career girls lost their priority in the woman’s cupboard in T-shirts decades ago-a plateonic ideal of a plate-plate is the ideal of the place.

Ms. Kamali recently said, “The development of the blouse is a way the development of femininity, and the development of fashion.” In addition to the blouse, a large modular desk of the 1980s and some pottery and family tchotchkes are the only objects in the room. She and her husband, Costantin Wehram, and her two sons, age 3 and 5, went into the house, when she got a job in Chloe last year – she was on her way to California – and they did not have much time to unpack.

“Historically, the blouse was a man’s undergarment,” he said. When she talks about something she loves, you can hear her working through her thoughts in real time: “Then, in Victorian times, the blouse became feminine. Post wise, it was more sewn. In the 1970s, again, more fluid, and in the 80s, more powerful. It can be formal and strict or fickle and romantic. This reflects personality. This shows all the things that make us that we are women. ,

This is very meaningful to load on a garment, but for Ms. Kamali, there is not just a bit of clothes with a blouse button.

Shirt on her back

Nobody wears a better blouse than Ms. Kamali, not even converting like Carly Claus and Leia Cabed, who have started line up in her lacei tops and wooden platforms. Ms. Kamali’s distinctive uniform begins with one with a touch of her own design or from her collection, often with a touch of embroidery in an aged ivory to lend it a vague bohemian air.

“A blouse is much easier than a dress,” she said.

She combines them with high-kam chlo jeans, chopped on the hem, white chloe high-top sneakers and a confusion of necklace, some new, some are sour in the same vintage markets where she finds her blouse. The waist-length is participated in the center with brown hair and a face is prepared that looks free, it makes a vibe that is both Venice Beach Hippi-Ms. Kamali grew up mostly in Dortmund, Germany and skilled. If Stevy Nix had one day’s work in a venture capital fund, she could look like this.

“He is aspiring,” actress Rashida Jones said, who met Ms. Kamali a year ago. “But this is not inaccessible. It sounds grounded. ,

Kaya Garbar, who has modeling for Ms. Kamali and wears her clothes from the runway, put it in such a way: “Cuena herself is a will that women know about women without following the society without following your power.

43 -year -old Ms. Kamali started collecting blouses in 2003, which was around the time when she got her first job in Cloe. She knew that she wanted to become a designer when she was a child, and in Germany, she said, it meant that Carl Learfeld, the most famous German designer, who was then in Cloe. She went to the University of Applied Sciences in Germany, and spoke to her in Chloe as a trainee during the Foeb Philo Yuga.

“The first designer piece I ever bought, in fact, was in the company’s employee sales for 50 euros,” he said, pointing to a white T-shirt, woven with a “necklace” with a silver tear. “When my vintage passion began, I remember that team members are coming back from the trips with big duffle bags and had to unpack the treasure while looking for them.

He received a degree from Central St. Martins, working in Alberta Ferreti; Cloo again, Cloo under Clair White Keller; And then St. Laurent before returning to Chloe in the top job. But wherever she went, Ms. Kamali kept buying a blouse. She does not buy, as many collectors do, for historical or physical value, rather according to the description that holds her eye – “sleeve or gambling volume or construction.”

As a result, its pieces are not very expensive. They are “super cheap to $ 700,” he said, although the average is approximately $ 300. She sources them like a current relationship in Los Angeles like eBay, vintage fairs and which has turned into an expanded network of vintage dealers.

“You go to a store, you go to a market and you meet this person who says,” Okay, you want it more, there are some stuff in my basement, “he said. “Then, joining this community, this group of obsessed people becomes a addiction about all about rare discovery.” It also made him perfect for the Cloe.

All blouses all the time

The blouse is an important part of the Chloe Esthetic that when the Jewish Museum in New York conducted the first major retrospective dedicated to the Cloe in 2023, it dedicated an entire room to the blouse. As a garment, it enforces the easy-love-fiminin tone set by the founder, Gabby Aigion in 1952, and was repeated by designers including Sri Legrafeld, Stella McCartney, Ms. Keller and Gabrila Hurrst, including designers.

But when they made all blouses, no one made them central for their beauty as Ms. Kamali had. This is the way “she connects to the basic values ​​of the House,” Philipp Fortunato said, the Chief Executive Officer of Fashion and Accessories at Richmont, Messon, Swiss Group who owns Cloe.

Indeed, Ms. Kamali’s first collection for Chloe was built around a blouse. In particular, a piece is designed by Carl Leargfeld for Chlo, with a black capsalet manufactured in the top. The blouse, she said, “thinking that there is a iconic piece in the history of Cape Cloe.”

The way in a Victorian blouse, lace inspired the lacei tier of the previous collection, which was not only visible in the actual blouse, but also in the playsuits with blouse and fabric influences that looked like long versions of the blouse.

And as, for her third collection, to unveil March 6, Ms. Kamali was thinking about something, Carl Legfeld once “said about the original idea: a blouse and a skirt.”

He said, “The idea of ​​looking at the blouse is not really as a component of a look, but as the main component,” he said. In turn inspired him to consider the blouse as a container of historical pieces: a doleman sleeve, or an exaggerated collar or shoulder. All of which made their way into the collection.

“It’s not about copying,” he said. “This is about using the blouse in the past or as a way of rooting things in the tradition.” And the indication is that it has a place in the future.

And as Lauren Santo Domingo, the founder of Moda Operandi, reports, it is working. Cloo “is one of our fastest sales designers,” Ms. Santo Domingo said, seeing that the sale of Chloe Tops increased by 138 percent as Ms. Kamali’s first collections appeared.

For photographer David Sims, who shoots Cloe Campaign, Ms. Kamali essentially “represented a new French type of woman, with a drama around nudity and embroidery with a drama that suggests ownership on a sexual energy and power that feels like the answer to many questions recently.” Questions about gender and stereotype; Questions about male gaze. While doing so that through the prism of a garment which was essentially accused for fashion and dustbin of old rock stars, he said, “fundamentalist”.

But this tension is actually the point of Ms. Kamali’s Cloe, who has taken the Cloe Girl and grown her as a woman.

Ms. Kamali said, “The word ‘Chloe Girl’ is associated with how the world considers the house in the first place.” “But the word ‘girl’ is redective. I never want a chlo woman to have only one thing. There is no woman. She is changing mood and emotions. Ease and optimism always exist with stress. These are the contradictions and opponents that make everything interesting.”

Including, perhaps, in particular, shirt on your back.