How do you say goodbye to a brand that you’ve helmed for six years? If you’re Chloé’s Clare Waight Keller, whose departure was announced at the end of January and rumored since late 2016, you do so via Instagram over a period of weeks, and then in a matter of minutes with a sweet Fall collection that was not, however, without a brief sting. The Human League sang “Don’t You Want Me” as the models made their finale lap and Waight Keller came out to a standing ovation for her hands-in-the-air last bow. It was hard not to read a message into that.
Waight Keller’s charmed tenure at this house came in tandem with the rise of Instagram and, thanks to nostalgic references to music and film icons of the 1960s and 1970s that were both clear and strategic—Jane Birkin and Marianne Faithfull (who was in the front row today)—she oversaw the corresponding rise of the Chloé-girl mystique. For the social media holdouts out there, the Chloé girl is a festival-loving, sun-chasing bohemian (with a big bank account, it must be said) who wears track pants and Baja shirts or motorcycle leathers when she’s not in the floaty frocks that are the label’s stock-in-trade. Like Phoebe Philo and Stella McCartney, other British women who held the creative director post at this French company for shorter stints in the late ’90s and early aughts, Waight Keller liked to round out her offerings with smart tailoring.
A greatest hits collection was not her inclination this season. Rather, as she pointed out backstage, her aim was to look forward with her tailoring, emphasizing a strong shoulder and dropping the waist on full-leg pleated trousers, a style she hadn’t tried before at Chloé. This puts her in league with other designers who are rejiggering and elongating the silhouette for Fall via hip-slung pants. Likewise, her boxy men’s jackets in vaguely grungy plaids keyed into the season’s major trends. Otherwise, Waight Keller was in Marianne Faithfull–dolly bird mode, cutting dresses ’60s-short and decorating them with just-this-side-of-psychedelic Alice in Wonderland illustrations, then accessorizing them with brogue Mary Janes. The message this writer got from those frocks? Waight Keller is ready for her next adventure.
