Paris Fashion Week: Getting sentimental at Chloe

Gaby Aghion, who founded Chloe in 1952, died Saturday at age 93. So the house’s current designer, Clare Waight Keller, dedicated the spring 2015 collection to her.
Aghion staged her first fashion show at Paris’ famous writers and artists’ hangout Café de Flore, firmly establishing the label’s association with the Left Bank bohemian lifestyle. And as a designer, she helped to define the look, or attitude, of boho chic.
Since she retired, there has been a string of designers at Chloe, including Karl Lagerfeld in the 1960s and '70s, and later, Stella McCartney and Phoebe Philo.
The inspiration for Keller’s spring Chloe collection was modern folklore and “fabrics that tell stories,” the show notes said. “Authenticity of spirit, soulful, honest and individual.” That translated as a cream, patched lace mini dress meant, perhaps, to look like it was made from your grandmother’s lace doilies, a blue sweatshirt lovingly sun-faded, maybe after years of summer fun, worn with a long button-front denim maxi skirt; and a cream maxi dress covered in fraying folkloric embroidery that could just has well have been a treasured souvenir from an exotic getaway.
In between, there were airy gauze gowns with delicate lace insets; ring-pierced lace tops and mini dresses; utilitarian-looking shorts, jackets and tops, and wedge-sole gladiator sandals to keep things grounded.
It was interesting to see this collection immediately after Philo’s Celine. Both Philo and Keller were playing with notions of sentimentality, trying to create luxury goods imbued with a kind of intimacy, and individual history. But Philo’s collection won out, mostly because the fabrics were more special, and the details more unexpected.