Paris Fashion Week S/S 2012: Womenswear

Chloé

Expectations were high for Clare Waight Keller's debut as creative director at Chloé, after her successful run at Pringle. Keller has stated she looked to 'festival girls, girls on the street and David Bailey's photos of Marie Helvin and Anjelica Huston on a beach' for her sunny, feminine summer approach. The show had an uplifting spirit, with models bouncing in their strappy sandals while the pleats in their crepe-de-chine shirt dresses swung back and forth. Pleating seemed to be Keller's biggest design concept; she worked up from a knife scale to a car-wash flap. The best examples were overprinted to give a sun-ray effect on mid-calf dresses that fell in an A line from the neck. Also promising was the colourful embroidery. We would've loved to have seen it developed further