my kind of gal

showmoda

This was good in the way that spanish tortilla or home-made mac and cheese is good - it looks kind of wrong but it feels so right. Who cares if the shapes are unflattering? Wearing things that make you look good is so last season. An over oversized silhouette is the kind of thing that I want to wear, and I haven't seen shapes this good in a long time. Boring leather skirts that hit below the knee (yes!), ballooning jackets and coats in shades of salmon pink and lemon yellow (yes! yes!), funny, frumpy, bizarre-o sweaters in a wide cut with the sleeves rolled up (oh, yes!). Everything was bad at the Chloe show, which is to say, it was so very, very good. 

The bags were either too big or too small - little crossbody things on dainty chains or oversized clutches with triple zippers and lots of pockets. The shoes were clompy - flatform wedges with an ankle strap or the kind of mary-jane with a massive heel you could stomp around in. The colours were kind of weird - classic french lace in creams jostled for attention alongside ox-blood red, mustard yellow and mint green. In fact, nothing was just right. But I'm no goldilocks. I don't want just right, I don't even want too small. I want too big with plenty of room to breathe and more fabric than you can poke a stick at. If you can hide within a too-big fleecy lining then sign me up. If you can shove your hands deep into your pockets then sign me up. If, in my favourite look from the whole collection, you can layer a delicate little lace thing under a printed sweatshirt then please, please, please, sign me up! People have been saying it looked like the dowdy younger sister of Celine. Well - I've always said that as much as I love and admire everything that Phoebe Philo even looks at  I often feel that it is too polished for me, too grown up, too sophisticated. My hair is too messy, my nail polish too chipped, my clothes a bit too scruffy. I'm just, I think, a bit too young. And that's that.

People can dislike it all they want. People can say that it looks more like Stella McCartney or Celine than it does Chloe (and yes, there are touches of both to it, but it bears remembering that both Stella and Phoebe worked at Chloe previously). I have loved Claire Waight Keller since the moment she sent massive cable knit sweaters in shades of clotted cream parading down the Pringle catwalk. This collection is the Chloe DNA but modernised for the contemporary trends. Modernised for the Ashley Olsen generation who like their clothes a little bigger. There were still elements of the pretty - pastel shades and dainty bags and little slips-of-things lace pieces. There were still elements of the youthful - comfortable shoes for running around in, fantastic coats for wearing to death, plenty of leather. And there was plenty that was French - the bow-tie jumpsuit, the simple silk shirts and the chic clutch bags. But it all seemed so new, what with the little ankle cuffs on the pants, or the XXL cut of the culottes, or lace-fleece-cotton mix sweatshirts. And it all seemed so British, too. It was cosy and quirky and not at all sexy. Alexa Chung, distilled into clothes. And I want it all!

X