Chloé shows us a post-girly world

http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2016/mar/03/chloe-shows-us-a-post-girly-world

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What has happened at the Paris-based, English-led house of Chloé is a microcosm of what has happened to fashion. Until a year or so ago, Chloé turned out solid, commercial collections based on a classically French, ultra-feminine style of dressing: blouses and elegant trousers, tousled hair and expensive sunglasses. Chic and pretty with a catch-all air of non-specific nostalgia, Chloé was bohemian in the most vanilla sense.

But Chloé, along with the rest of women’s fashion, has toughened up. Paris fashion week is a post-girly world, and nowhere is the change as obvious as it is at Chloé, where designer Clare Waight Keller gave Paris fashion week its first out-of-the-box hit on Thursday morning.

In search of an autumnal sequel to a summer collection of half-zip tracksuit tops and rave-y rainbow coloured skirts which confirmed a cooler, less wide-eyed tone for the brand six months ago, Waight Keller was researching motocross clothing when she came across the memoir of Anne-France Dautheville, who in 1973 became the first woman to motorcycle solo around the world.

Dautheville became the starting point for a collection of leather trousers and dungarees, campfire ponchos and kaftan-styled dresses. The Parisian motifs of Chloé remain but with a new attitude: the 1970s sheer blouses are no longer ethereal but come in earthy tones of indigo and jade; handbags are oversized and slung casually behind one hip. There is still a silk scarf tied at the throat but combined with the leather and the flat boots and worn by models who scowl rather than decoratively pout, they take on a new highwayman swagger.

“I was looking to take the Chloé woman somewhere else,” said Waight Keller backstage after the show. “Somewhere tougher, more daring, more gritty. I was looking at motocross images, and I found this amazing woman. She had such independence of mind, of spirit: she didn’t get visas or anything, she just took off on these incredible adventures.”

Images from Dautheville’s book, ‘Et j’ai suivi le vent’ (‘And I followed the wind’) which Waight Keller had displayed on her backstage mood board, show a glamorous, long-haired woman in belted jackets, leather trousers and scoop neck T-shirts. “She took amazing dresses with her on her travels,” the designer noted. “I want Chloé to tell a story, and what better way than through a woman who really lived that free-spirited life?”