Forget the tinsel. Chloé's new festive campaign trades glitter-bomb cheer for low light, soft intimacy and a very familiar face in the middle of it.
Claudia Schiffer has been cast as the main character of the party you actually want to be at: the one that gets interesting after everyone else has gone home. The new Chloé festive campaign is her showcase, and it skips the usual holiday brief of cheer, confetti and a wall of fairy lights.
Creative director Chemena Kamali directed the story, and David Sims shot it. The setting is the hours after dark, when the light goes soft, the mood gets closer and everything starts to feel like a scene from a film. Schiffer is billed as a Friend of the House, which tells you she’s no hired guest here. She’s part of the family, and the pictures read that way.
Lights down, volume down
Kamali has said what she was chasing. “I wanted to explore a more nocturnal expression of the Chloé woman, with a cinematic aura that feels spontaneous, sensual and a little mysterious,” she explains.
That is a lot of moods for one photoshoot, and the campaign holds all of them at once. Think of the late-evening version of yourself: a bit looser, a bit more honest, not quite sure who’s watching. Kamali is betting that this person is more fun to dress than the one who arrives at 7 p.m. with a perfect blow-dry and a tray of canapés.
Schiffer is the one who sells it. Kamali points to her ability to communicate sensuality in a natural way, and says she brought both intimacy and personality to the concept. It’s a neat bit of casting logic. You can style a model into a mood, but a woman who already carries it needs no help.
The clothes, in three words
If you’re here for the wardrobe, the collection comes down to a short list of ideas. Chloé starts from its recognisable design signatures and pushes them toward more depth and opulence. The ingredients:
Rich textures, the kind you want to touch before you’ve even checked the label. Sensual silhouettes, which set the tone for the whole thing. And luminous accents, the festive flicker that catches the light when the room dims.
So no costume-party reinvention. The house’s usual language stays in place, just delivered more slowly and with a little more shine. If you’ve ever loved a Chloé look for its easy, undone femininity, this is that same woman dressed for the late shift.
Why this one stands out
Holiday campaigns tend to compete on volume: the bigger the set, the brighter the sparkle, the louder the joy. Chloé has gone the other way. Kamali describes the project as part of an ongoing exploration of the different expressions of the Chloé woman, with the relationship between personality and fashion at its heart. This season’s expression just happens to be the nocturnal one.
That framing is worth noticing. The party look isn’t presented as a fantasy persona you slip into once a year. It’s the same woman, only now it’s night. Spontaneous femininity meets the heightened glamour of evening dressing, and nobody has to pretend to be someone else to pull it off.
For anyone who has stood at a party wondering whether to commit to the sequins, there’s something reassuring about that. The glamour is meant to feel like yours, not borrowed from a mood board or a moodier friend.
Mark your calendar
The Chloé festive collection arrives in boutiques and online in early November. That leaves you a little time to decide which kind of person you are: texture, silhouette or shine. Judging by the campaign, the smart move is to pick all three, with the lights set low and the group chat muted.
Via Design Scene
