It's tempting to imagine that Clare Waight Keller came to her inspiration for this season's Chloé collection by accident: Playing music alphabetically off iTunes, David Bowie's Best of Bowie serendipitously gave way to Kate Bush's The Sensual World, and lo and behold, a collection was conceived. That probably isn't what happened, but however it did, Waight Keller was onto something, drawing a line between Bush's rural, gypsy romanticism and Bowie's urbane, androgynous glam. You could imagine either artist, at a certain point in his or her career, donning one of the designer's silk poet-sleeve blouses or throwing on a cape-like coat in a madcap combination of shearling and Mongolian fur. There was a nigh-on louche opulence here, witnessed in everything from the touch of Lurex on a pair of fantastic, low-slung boot-cut pants to the Aubrey Beardsley-esque prints and the nub of longhair pony on a bag or miniskirt. Nowhere was that opulence better exemplified than in a diaphanous gown of Lurex-dabbed printed silk: Slit vertiginously, the dress was largely comprised of ribbons of the silk that had been sewn onto a sheer backing, and it conjured nothing so much as butterfly wings. Very sexy butterfly wings, it must be noted—and that sensuality operated throughout the collection as a whole. Chloé is usually associated with a kind of virginal, gamine look, but Waight Keller chucked it this time—some of these clothes were intensely womanly, others rather boyish, and a good deal of them were borderline feral. Lolita was missing this season. But she wasn't missed.
