Decadence, romance, hedonism, rebellion: Shot by the renowned David Sims in the South of France, Chloé’s Winter 2025 campaign reaches further back than the bohemian free-spiritedness of the 1970s, but to the decadent movement of the late 19th century. As a form of rebellion against the restraint of bourgeois norms, the Decadents embraced excess, beauty, and sensuality, championing aesthetic hedonism over logic and the natural world. This collection refuses to acknowledge winter as a time for hibernation. Creative Director Chemena Kamali’s winter is an urgent invitation to dress with abandon, to resist all forms of restraint: even the meteorological. 

“With these images, I wanted to capture the off-season spirit as well as the sense of escape and freedom of the French Riviera in the early 1970s, a time when creative freedom, decadence and mystery collided with the raw hedonism of that time. Grace brought her own sensuality, rebellious charisma and dynamic free spirited energy into the campaign and made it entirely hers.” Chemena Kamali, Creative Director of Chloé

Grace Hartzel is the epitome of the Chloé-girl: effortlessly extravagant, untamed, captivating, elusive. In the quiet of the off-season, we are drawn into her world as she leads us into the splendor of a Belle Époque villa that feels both ethereal and uncanny. Hartzel confronts the viewer with her unwavering gaze, creating a tension that evokes the Aphrodite of Knidos.

Kamali embraces the romanticization of the past, playing into contemporary nostalgia while simultaneously rejecting stagnation and the veneration of an evasive past without context. It is no coincidence that such a collection appears amid a time of rising fascism and mass human rights violations, echoing the epochs that inspire it.

The magic of Chloé’s Winter 2025 campaign arises from Kamali and Sims’ masterful use of contrast: sensuality and restraint, presence and escape. They urge us to read between the lines and ask whether we will have the courage to claim our freedom or surrender to convention.