On the second floor of a 19th century villa near Bois des Boulogne, there are rooms filled with blouses overlooking the garden that houses children's trampolines and various plastic scooters. Hundreds of blouses.
A lace blouse and a major shoulder blouse from the 1980s, from the Victorian era. Paisley and leopard print blouse. A blouse of familiar pedigrees – Ungaro, Yves St. Laurent, Giorgio di San Angelo – and a blouse that is completely unpedagogical. Rainbows of blouses arranged according to the color of the six clothing racks.
Welcome to the heart of Chemena Kamali, Creative Director of Chloé – or rather, the Home Office.
In just two seasons, if you want to understand how she has transformed Chloe from a serious but minor woman warehouse to one of fashion's hottest labels, not to mention the uniforms of cool girls like Skiwaterhouse and Sienna Miller (and while running the President's Kamala Harris), you need to understand the obsession of Kamali's flock.
She has been collecting them for 25 years and has over 1,500 blouses. Her parents' house in Germany, stored in France, and her home alone has nearly 500 people. For her, the blouse is actually the ideal of Plato in the clothing Plato, a relatively unappreciated top, Edward's nanny, a girl with a career in the 1970s who lost the advantage of place in the women's wardrobe decades ago.
“The evolution of blouses is, in a sense, an evolution of femininity and fashion,” Kamari was recently shoved into one of two huge leather chairs in her office. Aside from the blouse, a large modular desk from the 1980s and some ceramics and family vestiges are the only objects in the room. She and her husband Constantine Wehram and their two sons, ages 3 and 5, moved into the house when they got a job at Chloe last year.
“Historically, blouses were men's underwear,” she said. When she talks about what she loves, you can hear her working her ideas in real time. “And then, during the Victorian era, the blouse was feminized. After the war, it was more customized. In the 1970s, it was fluid again, and in the 80s it became more powerful. It can be formal, strict or playful, romantic. It reflects personality. It reflects everything we make us as women.”
It means loading it into clothes in many ways, but for Kamari, a blouse is more than just a buttoned fabric.
Shirt on her back
No one wears a better blouse than Kamari. It doesn't even convert like Kali Kros or Riya Kebede. Kamari's typical uniforms start with her own design, Chloe blouse or collection blouse.
“A blouse is much easier than a dress,” she said.
She pairs them with high-waisted Chloe jeans, shredded at the hem, tangled white Chloe high-top sneakers and necklace tangled, some new, some sourced in the same vintage market where she finds her blouses. When her waist-length brown hair parted in the middle and framing her face that appears to have no makeup, Kamari creates a hippie vibe from Venice Beach, despite growing up mainly in Dortmund and Dortmund, Germany. If Stevie Knicks had a day job at a venture capital fund, she might look like this.
“She's ambitious,” said actress Rashida Jones, who met Kamari a year ago. “But I don't feel that's impossible. It feels like it's grounded.”
This is what Kaia Gerber, modeled after Kamari and dressed from the runway.
Kamari, 43, began collecting blouses in 2003. She knew she wanted to be a designer as a child, and in Germany it meant she was like Karl Lagerfeld, the most famous German designer who was in Chloe. She went to the University of Applied Sciences in Trier, Germany, and spoke to Chloe as an intern during her time at Phoebe Phillo.
“In fact, the first designer piece I've ever purchased was 50 euros for sale by an employee at the company,” she said. “That was when my vintage obsession began because I remember members of my team returning from a trip using a large duffel bag and unpacking the treasures they found. I realized how certain source pieces can trigger the creative process that flows through the concept of collection.”
She earned her degree from Central St. Martins and worked for Alberta Ferretti. Chloe, again under Claire Wight Keller. And before Saint Laurent returns to Chloe for his top job. But wherever she went, Kamari kept buying her blouses. She does not buy for historical or material value, as many collectors do, but rather “the volume or structure of the sleeves or yokes” according to her eye-catching details.
As a result, her work is not banned. The average is around $300, but “from super cheap to $700,” she said. She has been sourced from eBay, transformed into vintage fairs like the current events of Los Angeles, and an expanded network of vintage dealers.
“You go to the store, you go to the market and meet this person who says, 'OK, you want more, I have a few things in my basement,'” she said. “Then, by connecting to this community, this group of obsessives becomes addictive about rare findings,” she also fits perfectly with Chloe.
All blouses
The blouse was a very important part of Chloe's aesthetic, and when the Jewish Museum in New York held its first major retrospective in 2023, it dedicated the entire room to the blouse. As clothing, it encapsulated a simple Breeze feminine tone set by founder Gaby Aghion in 1952, and replicated to various extents by designers who came later, including Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney, Keller, and Gabriella Hearst.
But they all made blouses, but no one created the centre of their aesthetics as much as Kamari had. Philip Fortunato, chief executive of Fashion and Accessories Maison in Richmont, a Swiss conglomerate that owns Chloe, said it “connects to the basic values of her home.”
Certainly, Kamari's Chloe's first collection was built around a blouse. Specifically, Karl Lagerfeld's work, designed for Chloe, features a black capellet built into the top. The blouse “considers that the Cape is an iconic piece in Chloe's history,” she said.
Just as the laces in the Victorian blouse influenced Laceytia in the final collection, it looked not only in the actual blouse, but also in the playsuit with the influence of blouses and dresses, which looked like a longer version of the blouse.
And for her third collection, as announced on March 6th, Kamari once thought of what Karl Lagerfeld once said about “the basic idea is the simplest: blouses and skirts.”
“That kind of thing sparked me the idea that I really see the blouse as a main component, not as an exterior component,” she said. This led her to the idea of a blouse as a container of historical fragments: dolman sleeves, for example, or exaggerated collars and shoulders. All of these have been in the collection.
“It's not about copying,” she said. “It's using a blouse as a way to root things in the past or tradition.” And it shows that it has a place for the future.
And as reported by Lauren Santo Domingo, founder of Moda Operandi, it works. Chloe is “one of our fastest sold out designers,” Santo Domingo said Chloe Tops sales have grown by 138% since Camari's first collection was introduced.
For David Sims, the photographer who films Chloe's campaign, Kamari created essentially “a new French-like representation of women and plays around nude and embroidery that suggest ownership of sexual energy and power that feels like the answer to many questions that have been born recently.” Questions about gender and stereotypes. Questions about men's gazes. He said it was “radical” to do it through a prism of clothing essentially relegated to fashion and the old rockstar trash can.
However, that tension actually was the point of Kamari's Chloe, who took Chloe's girl to grow into a woman.
“The term “Chloe Girl” is very connected to how the world first perceived a home,” Kamali said. “But the word “girl” is reductive. I don't want Chloe's woman to be just one thing. There are no women. She changes her mood and emotions. Peace and optimism always exist with tension. These contrasts and the opposition to these are what makes everything interesting. ”
Especially the shirt on the back.
