Luxury house CHLOÉ unveiled its Fall Winter 2023 Collection, that pays tribute to the 17th-century Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi, on March 2nd, during the ongoing Paris Fashion Week. Creative director Gabriela Hearst explores the imperative need for women’s stories and their contributions to society to be heard, so they can play a leading role in the race to find climate solutions. Although climate change impacts everyone, women and girls are disproportionately affected – four out of five people displaced by climate change are women. Hearst presented a new way to structuring her Chloé collections as chapters – each dedicated to a pioneering climate solution. The first chapter FW22 looked at the planet’s proven intrinsic ability to rehabilitate itself, the second chapter SS23 explored the potential for clean energy to wean people off fossil fuels, and now chapter three FW23 focuses on climate success and the urgent need to champion women as leaders.
FALL WINTER 2023.24 WOMENSWEAR COLLECTIONS
The collection was inspired by the work of Italian Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi (1593 – 1653), who overcame a range of societal and personal struggles, and became one of the most accomplished seventeenth-century artists. Even though Gentileschi lived at a time when women’s bodies and choices were strongly regulated, she managed to subvert the norms of the time and use her art and voice to advocate for women. One of the biggest inspiration for this season’s collection was Gentileschi’s painting Esther before Ahasuerus that shows the biblical heroine Esther going before Ahasuerus to beg him to spare her people. The Book of Esther is transposed onto dresses and bags as a graphic, multicoloured, tapestry, and is also reimagined in black and brown contrast embroideries on a leather skirt and matching jacket. To capture the feminine power of Artemisia’s paintings and her steely conviction, the brand used Renaissance-inspired silhouettes, innovative fabrications and unexpected materials.
“A puffer cape coat with ruching along the seams is made from recycled nylon. An off-the-shoulder dress cut above the knee with bishop sleeves is cut from Nappa leather – a modernist, graphic take on the Renaissance. The use of black and white contrasting fabrics accentuates the heart-shaped waists and high necklines of dresses, imbuing these historic references with a contemporary aesthetic. Lower-impact wool gauze—a Chloé pillar fabric—delivers a subtle statement of feminine power with its ethereal quality and is used in a range of garments including capes and long dresses. Renaissance architecture inspired a multitude of fabrications that demonstrate the Maison’s savoir-faire. A dégradé pattern of black satin diamonds is handappliquéd onto wool. A graphic material made from thin strips of black, white and yellow fabric is sewn together by our partners Akanjo and is used for coats. Trousers are assiduously constructed from intricate lattice formations of handinserted leather braids and pintucks. The boundaries of fabric development has been explored. New lace techniques have been developed for a figure-hugging dress to give it stretch and ease for the active woman. An oversized cape dress is knitted from a cashmere and silk ‘faux fur’. The panelling of dresses with horizontal and vertical lines is based on crinoline pattern pieces but engineered on the knitting machine to introduce a sense of Chloé flou and femininity into the knitwear.” – from Chloé
