Chloé was also founded in 1952. Other than the other brands in this article it does not carry the name of its founder, Gaby Aghion. At the time of founding Chloé, Aghion was frustrated with, as she felt, the heavy copy-and-pasting of the similar styles for women. She believed that women should dare to be themselves and wanted to offer something unique, thus founding her own house. Her clothes borrowed inspiration from her Egyptian roots. She offered dresses that were much more relaxed and lighter than the very structured creations of her peers, such as Yves Saint Laurent or also Hubert de Givenchy. She wanted to exude a relaxed sort of elegance and effortlessness through her clothing. Later the brand’s design was headed by Karl Lagerfeld who further propelled its bourgeois-bohème hippie chic spirit. After the creative direction was taken over by Stella McCartney and Phoebe Philo amongst others. Its last creative director being Gabriela Hearst.

In recent years it seems that Chloé has placed its bets less on the effortless-woman-heritage. It brands itself as the sustainable luxury brand – a very admirable and in terms of the need for change in the clothing industry outright morally correct transformation. Chloé became a B-Corp certified company and overall very transparent concerning its products value chain, e.g., featuring traceability information on country of origin. I truly believe, more fashion companies should aim at creating true transformation with regards to their sustainability efforts. Nevertheless, recent high-level executive changes at the helm of Chloé – both CEO and Creative Direction has been changed within the last 6 months – let me infer that the Richemont-daughter was not developing commercially as expected.

We can’t – yet again – fully assess Chloé’s commercial performance as the annual report does not individually disclose the brands performance. However, when referring to Chloé, Richemont’s annual report 2023 only talks about growth once! All the other mentions refer to sustainability efforts. This does not give me the feeling that the strategy, no matter how important and morally right it was, was translating into creating the sufficient growth expected from a listed group by its investors.

Chloé has now taken similar steps in terms of heritage re-connection as Alexander McQueen. With the announcement of new Creative Director Chemena Kamali in October 2023 a quote was published in which she was already referring to the house’s heritage, name-dropping both Gaby Aghion and Karl Lagerfeld. With their first post in January the house re-introduced its old logo from the Karl Lagerfeld era in the 1970. The following posts that give us insights into Kamali’s creative vision, feature quotes from the new creative director that highly reflect Gaby Aghion’s original interpretation of femininity.

Yet again, we see that long-term desirability is aimed at through an increased consciousness of the past. Heritage re-connection to inspire a boost of contemporary brand equity.