Paris is always watching. The streets remember every step, every glance exchanged in passing, every moment of hesitation before surrender. It is in this city that Chloé stages the return of the Paddington bag, a companion that moves with a woman in a feat of second nature.

Mati Diop films the return on 35mm, letting light and shadow brush across the women who carry it. Her Paris is fleeting—faces half-seen, encounters unfinished—yet the presence of the bag anchors the story, holding its own kind of permanence. David Sims’ still portraits expand the narrative. Shot in stark black and white, they trace individuality through expression and gesture, revealing intimacy without words.

Kendall Jenner sits at a movie theater with a gaze that suggests distance and focus. Aimee Lou Wood lets her emotions hover at the surface, soft yet unguarded. Anna of Meovv rests her head against her Paddington in a brief moment of respite. Each woman travels a distinct path, yet the Paddington remains a constant fixture, cradling what is never spoken aloud.

Since its debut in 2005, the bag has carried more than its hardware suggests. The padlock, iconic and functional, has become a symbol of possession not of the bag, but of one’s own time and presence. Reintroduced for Winter 2025, the Paddington returns refined—lighter in weight, supple in washed vegetable-tanned leather, its patina destined to change with the woman who wears it. The details—an adjusted shoulder drop, a new single-zip opening—create ease without ceremony.

Chemena Kamali, Chloé’s Creative Director, envisioned the bag as it moves through daily life, spontaneous and alive, carrying traces of character the way Paris carries memory. One of few women designers at the highest level of the fashion industry, Kamali is familiar with the intimacy shared between a woman and a bag. In fact, “intimacy and character” are not design features here; they are the very reason the bag exists.

A woman’s bag holds her in fragments: the pen that has written letters never sent, the lint-scrubbed lipstick worn down to its edge, the ticket stub from a movie that was deemed unremarkable. The Paddington is built for these fragments, to keep them close and to let them travel with her.

On the streets of Paris, the women move with their stories tucked inside. The bag rests against them, listening, remembering, becoming. Every gesture is cinematic because it is lived, and every life, in its own way, is unforgettable when carried this way.

The Chloé Paddington returns September 2025 in boutiques and at Chloe.com.