Lifestyle
Chemena Kamali of Chloé: The Queen of the Blouse
On the second floor of a 19th-century villa near the Bois de Boulogne, overlooking a garden housing a child’s trampoline and various plastic scooters, there is a room filled with blouses. Hundreds of blouses.
Lace blouses from the Victorian era and big-shouldered blouses from the 1980s. Blouses in paisley and leopard print. Blouses with familiar pedigrees — Ungaro, Yves Saint Laurent, Giorgio di Sant’ Angelo — and blouses with no pedigree at all. A rainbow of blouses arranged according to color on six clothing racks.
Welcome to the mind — or, rather, the home office — of Chemena Kamali, the creative director of Chloé.
If you want to understand how, in only two seasons, she transformed Chloé from an earnest but increasingly minor women’s wear house into one of fashion’s hottest labels, not to mention the uniform of cool girls like Suki Waterhouse and Sienna Miller (and, during her run for president, Kamala Harris), you have to understand Ms. Kamali’s obsession with the blouse.
She has been collecting them for 25 years and has more than 1,500 blouses: at her parents’ home in Germany, in storage in France, almost 500 in her house alone. For her, the blouse — that relatively unappreciated top, redolent of school uniforms, Edwardian nannies and 1970s career girls that lost its primacy of place in the woman’s wardrobe to the T-shirt decades ago — is actually the Platonic ideal of a garment.
“The evolution of the blouse is the evolution of femininity in a way, and the evolution of fashion,” Ms. Kamali said recently, tucked into one of the two giant leather chairs in her office. Aside from the blouses, a big modular desk from the 1980s and some pottery and family tchotchkes are the only objects in the room. She and her husband, Konstantin Wehrum, and their two sons, ages 3 and 5, moved into the house when she got the job at Chloé last year — they had been on their way to California — and she has not had a lot of time to unpack.
“Historically, the blouse was a man’s undergarment,” she said. When she talks about something she loves, you can hear her working through her ideas in real time: “Then, in Victorian times, the blouse became feminized. Postwar, it got more tailored. In the 1970s, again, more fluid, and in the ’80s, more powerful. It can be formal and strict or playful and romantic. It reflects personalities. It reflects all of the things that make us who we are as women.”
That’s a lot of meaning to load onto a garment, but to Ms. Kamali, the blouse is not just a bit of fabric with buttons.
The Shirt on Her Back
No one wears a blouse better than Ms. Kamali, not even converts like Karlie Kloss and Liya Kebede, who have begun to line the Chloé front rows in her lacy tops and wooden platforms. Ms. Kamali’s typical uniform starts with a Chloé blouse of her own design or one from her collection, often in an aged ivory with a touch of embroidery to lend it a vaguely bohemian air.
“A blouse is so much easier than a dress,” she said.
She pairs them with high-waist Chloé jeans, shredded at the hem, white Chloé high-top sneakers and a tangle of necklaces, some new, some sourced at the same vintage markets where she finds her blouses. With waist-length brown hair parted in the center and framing a face that seems makeup free, it creates a vibe that is both Venice Beach hippie — even though Ms. Kamali grew up mostly in Dortmund, Germany — and efficient. If Stevie Nicks had a day job at a venture capital fund, she might look like this.
“She’s aspirational,” said the actress Rashida Jones, who met Ms. Kamali a year ago. “But it doesn’t feel unattainable. It feels grounded.”
Kaia Gerber, who has modeled for Ms. Kamali and wears her clothes off the runway, put it this way: “Chemena herself is a testament to holding your power without having to adhere to the judgments society makes about women based on the way they dress.”
Ms. Kamali, 43, started collecting blouses in 2003, which was around the time she got her first job at Chloé. She knew she wanted to be a designer when she was a child, and in Germany, she said, that meant being like Karl Lagerfeld, the most famous German designer, who was then at Chloé. She went to the University of Applied Sciences in Trier, Germany, and talked her way into Chloé as an intern during the Phoebe Philo era.
“The first designer piece I ever bought, actually, was at the company’s employee sale for 50 euros,” she said, pointing to a white T-shirt with a “necklace” of silver teardrops woven into the front. “That’s when my vintage obsession started, because I remember members of the team coming back from trips with big duffel bags and unpacking treasures they’d found. I realized how certain source pieces can trigger a creative process that can flow into the concept of a collection.”
She got a degree from Central Saint Martins, worked at Alberta Ferretti; Chloé again, under Clare Waight Keller; and then Saint Laurent before returning to Chloé in the top job. But wherever she went, Ms. Kamali kept buying blouses. She does not buy, as many collectors do, for historic or material value but rather according to details that catch her eye — “the volume or the construction of the sleeve or yoke.”
As a result, her pieces are not forbiddingly expensive. They range from “super cheap to maybe $700,” she said, though the average is about $300. She sources them from eBay, vintage fairs like A Current Affair in Los Angeles and what has turned into an extended network of vintage dealers.
“You go to a store, you go to a market and you meet this person who says, ‘OK, you want more of this, I have some stuff in my basement,’” she said. “Then, connecting to this community, this group of obsessive people all about the rare find, becomes an addiction.” It also made her perfect for Chloé.
All Blouses All the Time
The blouse is such an important part of the Chloé aesthetic that when the Jewish Museum in New York held the first major retrospective devoted to Chloé in 2023, it dedicated an entire room to the blouse. As a garment, it encapsulates the easy-breezy-feminine tone set by the founder, Gaby Aghion, in 1952, and was replicated to varying extents by the designers who came after, including Mr. Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney, Ms. Keller and Gabriela Hearst.
But while they all made blouses, none made them as central to their aesthetic as Ms. Kamali had. It is the way “she connects to the fundamental values of the house,” said Philippe Fortunato, the chief executive of the fashion and accessories maisons at Richemont, the Swiss conglomerate that owns Chloe.
Indeed, Ms. Kamali’s first collection for Chloé was built around a blouse. Specifically, a piece Karl Lagerfeld designed for Chloé with a black capelet of sorts built into the top. The blouse, she said, got her “thinking about how the cape is an iconic piece in Chloé’s history.”
Just as the lace in a Victorian blouse had inspired the lacy tiers of the last collection, which were visible not just in actual blouses, but also in playsuits with the affect of blouses and dresses that looked like longer versions of the blouses.
And just as, for her third collection, to be unveiled March 6, Ms. Kamali was thinking about something Karl Lagerfeld once said about “the basic idea being the simplest of all: a blouse and a skirt.”
“That kind of triggered in me the idea of really looking at the blouse not as a component of a look, but as the main component,” she said. That in turn led her to the idea of the blouse as a container of historical fragments: a dolman sleeve, say, or an exaggerated collar or shoulder. All of which made their way into the collection.
“It’s not about copying,” she said. “It’s about using the blouse as a way to root things in the past or in tradition.” And signal that it has a place in the future.
And as Lauren Santo Domingo, a founder of Moda Operandi, reports, it’s working. Chloé is “one of our fastest sellout designers,” Ms. Santo Domingo said, noting that sales of Chloé tops had grown 138 percent since Ms. Kamali’s first collections appeared.
For the photographer David Sims, who shoots the Chloé campaigns, Ms. Kamali has essentially created “the representation of a new French kind of woman, with a play around nudity and embroidery that suggests ownership over a sexual energy and power that feels like an answer to so many of the questions that have sprung up recently.” Questions about gender and stereotype; questions about the male gaze. Doing that through the prism of a garment that was essentially relegated to the dustbin of fashion and old rock stars is, he said, kind of “radical.”
But that tension is actually the point of Ms. Kamali’s Chloé, which has taken the Chloé girl and grown her into a woman.
“The term ‘Chloé girl’ is so connected to how the world perceived the house in the first place,” Ms. Kamali said. “But the word ‘girl’ is reductive. I never want the Chloé woman to be only one thing. No woman is. She has shifting moods and feelings. Ease and optimism always exists with tension. These contrasts and these opposites are what makes everything interesting.”
Including, maybe especially, the shirt on your back.
This story is part of Image’s April’s Thresholds issue, a tour of L.A. architecture as it’s actually experienced.
If you buy a product linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission. See all our Coveted lists of mandatory items here.
Yont Studio, Brutalist Pink Vinyl Listening Station, price upon request
(Serdar Ayvaz / Yont Studio)
In the best version of my dreams, I am listening to my favorite records out of the Brutalist Pink Vinyl Listening Station from Berlin-based Yont Studio. The structure — built of foam that’s been reinforced with epoxy layers and finished in a gloss — hugs a Technics SL-1200 MK7 turntable while featuring a dedicated space for records and headphones, with an integrated amplifier and wheels. The baby pink colorway gives it a hard-soft quality that’s hard to match. yontstudio.com
Waka Waka, Double Cylinder Rocker, $3,600
Designer Shin Okuda has described his design principle as such: “Minimum design. Conscious proportion.” The furniture from Okuda’s Los Angeles studio Waka Waka injects something deeply cool into the everyday. This rocking chair is equal parts dramatic and functional, featuring a stacked cylinder back, rocker frame and arm rests in a black glossy finish. (Other finishes include natural oil, white, pompeii red, indigo, grey, purple and forest green.) wakawaka.world
Gambol Studio X Dusty Ansell, knives, $230
Every item in your home being beautiful and well-designed is a flex, down to your cheese knives. Designed by L.A. studio Gambol and handmade by folk artist Dusty Ansell in a set of three, these knives are made of curly maple and stainless steel, featuring etched artwork depicting a hand, arm and fish. gambol.studio
Schiaparelli, Pierced Mouth Bijoux Minaudière, $13,300
Every design-meets-fashion head’s dream is having a pierced mouth clutch molded out of a rigid wood, no? This minaudière from Schiaparelli features a gold-plated metal chain and rhinestone piercing, bringing the idea of a statement bag to levels unheard of. schiaparelli.com
Hannah Lim X Hugo Harris, Bat Shelf, price upon request
(Hannah Lim and Hugo Harris)
Operating as a functional sculpture, the Bat Shelf is a collaboration between London artists Hannah Lim and Hugo Harris. The piece takes inspiration from Chinese fretwork patterns, Art Noveau designs and German sculptor Hugo Leven’s iconic pewter bat candelabras. Cut and welded from 5mm aluminum, the Bat Shelf comes in a raw aluminum finish or a powder-coated red. hannah-lim.co.uk ; hugoharris.co.uk
Formas, Clear Special Vase by Gaetano Pesce, $650
L.A. is so lucky to have Formas, a curated vintage and contemporary design store in the Arts District founded by Natalia Luna and Josh Terris. Formas’ collection is deep and well-researched, filled with rare furniture and design objects like this Clear Special Vase from iconic Italian architect and designer Gaetano Pesce. Handmade of flexible resin, each vase made in this series is a unique creation. formas.la
Estudio Persona, Luna Table Lamp, $2,500
Estudio Persona, the L.A. studio run by Uruguayan design duo Emiliana Gonzalez and Jessie Young, is a living, breathing wishlist. Made of metal and hand-blown glass, this lamp is the place where angles meet curves — a timeless piece with a healthy dose of edge. estudiopersona.com
Alaïa, nylon Maxi Petticoat, $5,030
When we think of an Alaïa piece we’re essentially thinking about shapes — of the body, of the clothes, of the shape made by the clothes on the body. This nylon Maxi Petticoat from the spring/summer 2026 collection, with its asymmetrical hemline and voluminous fit, is a kind of architecture, a way to build yourself into the world around you. maison-alaia.com
Loewe, Aire Sutileza Elixir Eau de Parfum 50Ml, $210
Image April 2026 Coveted
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Loewe has added another perfume to its scent directory, and the sixth Elixir in a collection of fragrances that boast an intense concentration of essential oils created by the brand’s perfumer Núria Cruelles with the Spanish Rockrose in mind. The Aire Sutileza Elixir is floral, fresh and earthy, featuring notes of pear, lemon, jasmine sambac, vetiver, sandalwood and musk. perfumesloewe.com
Sunday Puzzle
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This week’s challenge
Today’s puzzle is a tribute to Mimi. Every answer is a familiar two word phrase or name in which each word starts with the letters MI-.
Ex. Assignment for soldiers –> MILITARY MISSION
1. Pageant title for a contestant from Detroit
2. One of the Twin Cities
3. Nickname for the river through New Orleans
4. Super short skirt
5. Neighborhood in Los Angeles that contains Museum Row
6. Just over four times the distance from the earth to the moon
7. Goateed sing-along conductor of old TV
8. American financier who pioneered so-called “junk bonds”
9. Little accident
10. Land-based weapon in America’s nuclear arsenal
11. In “Snow White,” the evil queen’s words before “on the wall”
Last week’s challenge
Last week’s challenge comes from Benita Rice, of Salem, Ore. Name a famous foreign landmark (5,4). Change the eighth letter to a V and rearrange the result to make an adjective that describes this landmark. What landmark is it?
Answer
Notre Dame –> Renovated
Winner
Chee Sing Lee of Bangor, Maine
This week’s challenge
This week’s challenge comes from James Ellison, of Jefferson City, Mo. Think of a popular movie of the past decade. Change the last letter in its title. The result will suggest a lawsuit between two politicians of the late 20th century — one Republican and one Democrat. What’s the movie and who are the people?
If you know the answer to the challenge, submit it below by Thursday, April 23 at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle.
This story is part of Image’s April’s Thresholds issue, a tour of L.A. architecture as it’s actually experienced.
A landmark is a landmark because it tells you that you’re home now — the piece of earth you’ve chosen to inhabit saying, “You’ve made it back, congratulations.” We identify our cities with their landmarks, and because we identify with our cities, we identify with the landmarks too. They are us and we are them, mirroring each other through eternity. A city like New York or Chicago, with the Chrysler Building, the Bean, etc., has landmarks that exist in the world’s popular consciousness. But L.A.’s most cherished landmarks belong to us and us alone, a secret you’re let in on if you live here long enough and pay attention.
The Fashion Nova baddie in horizontal sprawl off the Vertigo, for example, is an emblem for those in the know. Our twisted version of a capitalist guardian angel, patron saint of spandex in a cropped matching set. Welcome to El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Fashion Nova. Merging on the 110 South from the 10 East while the sunset burns and traffic thickens is a miracle in more ways than one, and in the spirit of compulsively performing the sign of the cross when you pass a church on the freeway, this billboard is deserving of its own acknowledgment.
It may not be the landmark L.A. asked for, but in Sayre Gomez’s painting “Vertigo,” you begin to understand why it’s the one we deserve. At the opening for “Precious Moments,” Gomez’s solo show at David Kordansky, the room was vibrating. A game of energetic ping-pong unfolded underneath the gallery’s fluorescent light, beams of identification, recollections or stabs of grief bouncing off each piece in the exhibition. People were seeing hyperspecific parts of a city they love reflected in a hyperspecific way — for better and for worse. Recognition has two edges and they both happen to be sharp. Gomez twists the knife deeper for a good cause: He wants you not just to look but to really see.
In his work exist iconic signs of beloved local establishments — like the Playpen — the blinding glint reflecting off downtown’s skyline, telephone poles regarded as totems. The line to see Gomez’s replica of L.A.’s graffiti towers, “Oceanwide Plaza,” snaked through the gallery’s courtyard. Once inside, at least three graffiti writers whose names were blasted on the replica pointed it out proudly, even gave out stickers to take home. The truth can be beautiful and it can be ugly — in this case it’s both — on the flip side showing up in the form of smog, tattered flags and an abandoned graffiti tower that starkly represents the pitfalls of capitalism and greed, a neon arrow pointing to the homelessness crisis.
Because the Vertigo is something everybody who lives here recognizes as central to a sort of framework of Los Angeles. And I think the encampment has become that as well. It’s connecting these integral components — something that’s more revelatory and more fun with something that’s more grave.
— Sayre Gomez
In the main gallery, I was stuck on “Vertigo.” On the 12-foot canvas, my eye went to the place out of focus: the thin strip of billboard in the background featuring a young woman with sand-dune hips, patent knee-high boots and long black hair laid up on her side, wearing cat ears and a tiger bodysuit as flush as second skin. The model made the kind of eye contact that felt dangerous — might cause an accident if you’re not careful. “#1 Halloween Destination … FASHION NOVA,” it read. I knew her, anyone who has driven through the two main arteries of Los Angeles knows her. The black-and-white smiley motif of the Vertigo, an events space, sat right next to her face, just happy to be there, it seemed, above a painted sign that says “Ready to Party?”
The sky was the color of cotton candy, but the stale kind that’s been hardening in a plastic bag for days after the fair. Something rancid about it. In the foreground of the painting was a car encampment with a tattered floral sheet woven through the windows, cloth tarps and couch cushions creating a shield against the elements. Small plastic children’s toys lined at the top of the car — dinosaurs and dump trucks and sharks — creating their own shrunken skyline in front of the Vertigo, signaling that young kids likely lived there. It’s less juxtaposition for juxtaposition’s sake and more an accurate reflection of the breakneck duality of living in a place like L.A.
Even angels exist within the context of their environments. Our Fashion Nova baddie hangs off the Vertigo, a building that has used its ad space as physical clickbait and political posturing for over a decade. It’s promoting the kind of fast fashion brand that’s been regarded as a case study on the industry’s environmental impact. In the years the billboard has been up, it’s looked over dozens and dozens of car encampments like the one depicted in Gomez’s piece.
She feels dubious, yes. But no less like ours.
Julissa James: I’ve lived in L.A. for 13 years now. For me, the city and the architecture of the city is less the Frank Lloyd Wrights and Frank Gehrys — there’s that — but other landmarks that signal, “Oh, I’m home.” The Fashion Nova baddie above the Vertigo has always been that for me. Your piece is layered and there’s so much more to it than just that, but that’s the first thing I saw and was like, “Whoa. I need to talk to Sayre. We need to talk about ‘Vertigo.’”
Sayre Gomez: It’s like L.A.’s Statue of Liberty. It’s the city of anti-landmarks, you know what I mean? I mean, there’s the Hollywood sign, which I think is so telling, because it’s the remnants of a real estate venture. The city is built by real estate schemes and 100 years later we’re feeling the effects of it. You’ve got empty skyscrapers and a massive homeless catastrophe. L.A. doesn’t really have real landmarks. It has anti-landmarks.
JJ: When did the Fashion Nova billboard above the Vertigo click for you as something that felt representative of the city, or something that you wanted to depict?
SG: My studio is in Boyle Heights, so I pass that billboard multiple times a week. This is my 20th year in L.A. and that building’s always been a big mystery to me. It was empty when I moved here before this guy Shawn Farr bought it and turned it into Casa Vertigo. I think he probably makes more money on it with the ad space than anything. I know nobody who has ever been there. Very mysterious to me. So that’s what I was drawn to.
(Paul Salveson from David Kordansky Gallery)
The Vertigo has always been mysterious to me. And that whole fashion industry is mysterious to me — the kind of shmatta, American Apparel-adjacent, or maybe coming out of the wake of that. These kinds of businesses, or the representations of these businesses, how do they function and how do they flourish? Is it aboveboard? What more perfectly encapsulates that than that building? It’s this weird thing you can’t quite figure out but somehow it has a lot of money and then it’s an event space, supposedly billed as that. Clearly it’s this big ad thing, and I’m very interested in the changing dynamics of capital. The capital of yesteryear, which was based on the brick and mortar, where things are being made in a specific location, maybe on an assembly line or in a specific way, to a kind of capital that is based solely on advertising or on viewership. These beautiful buildings acting as pedestals for some kind of ad space, you know? It becomes an anti-landmark for me. Something where I’m like, “Oh, there’s that thing again.”
JJ: It’s this gorgeous Beaux Arts building …
SG: It’s a Freemason building!
JJ: When I’ve talked to some people about the Vertigo, they’re like, “the Fashion Nova building?”
SG: They always have the woman in the same pose — same pose, different clothes. If you remember before Fashion Nova, they would have these provocative ad campaigns or provocative slogans. “Twerk Miley” was up, remember that? They did a Trump one: “TRUMP NOW.” They did one for Kanye when he ran for president. The 10 and the 110 are literally the crossroads of the city, so it’s really poised to be a special building. It has a special designation because of the location.
JJ: Talk to me about the process of doing this piece. Where did it start and how did it evolve?
SG: I was cruising around that vicinity trying to see if I could get a good vantage point to take photos of Vertigo. And then I stumbled upon this car — the car that’s in the foreground of the painting. Anytime I see an encampment that has kids’ toys, things that reference back to the lives of children, it hits hard. But I like to lay it all out there. I like to make things confrontational. I want it to be difficult. The painting isn’t based on a one-to-one photo [Gomez paints from a composite rendering of images he’s taken around town], but I knew that I wanted to use that car, and I knew I wanted to get the Vertigo building, and so I started just messing around with different iterations. I could never find a good angle to take a good photo of the building, so I just went on Vertigo’s website and I was like, “I’m just using these.” I switched the sky and put a more moody, atmospheric sky in.
JJ: Which I loved, because we know that feeling — you’re merging onto the 110 and you see a beautiful sunset. The euphoria of like, “L.A. is the best city in the world.” But you know what? What I found so interesting about your piece is that it was revealing to me about myself, but also about so many of us that live in L.A. and have lived here for years and have developed a jadedness. When I saw your piece, immediately I was like, “Oh my God, the Vertigo! The Vertigo! The Vertigo!” And then I was like, “OK, wait, hold on, there’s so much more going on here.” But the fact that my eye went to that first instead of the car encampment, the kids’ toys, brought up a lot of questions about my own relationship to the city and the things that we choose to see, the things that maybe we’ve seen so much of that we subconsciously filter it out. Why was it important for you to put these two things up against each other in this way?
SG: Because the Vertigo is something everybody who lives here recognizes as central to a sort of framework of Los Angeles. And I think the encampment has become that as well. It’s connecting these integral components — something that’s more revelatory and more fun with something that’s more grave. That’s what I’m doing in my work at large. I use the sunsets and the beauty to create a dialogue, to entice people to sort of look a little bit at how things are contextualized, how things act, what’s actually happening. I don’t make things in a vacuum. I was working on this show and I was going to really push this agenda of incorporating more of my experience with my kids into the work. That’s also a double-edged sword. I wanted to interject some levity, because the work can get so dark. I wanted to bring in some iconography from their world and things that they get excited about. When you’re juxtaposing that with really stark things, it becomes darker. I want to thicken the stock a little bit. Make things a little more complex.
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