Chloe Spring 07 in no mans land

Style.com's Sarah Mower summed it up best when she said this of Chloe's Spring 07 line:

"PARIS, October 7, 2006 – Since Chloé is waiting for a new designer—Paulo Melim from Marni— to arrive, the spring show was necessarily a case of keeping the brand in a holding pattern. That considered, the team did a respectably unadventurous job of keeping the best-selling items warm: fragile blouses, short Empire dresses and, of course, the shoes and bags. The theme, according to the notes, was Gloria Vanderbilt, which apparently was indicated in log-cabin patchworks (her personal hobby) and that peculiarly seventies palette of ochre, brown, and purple. Meanwhile, there's no change to report in the silhouette, and no news that moved Chloé on from the template set by Phoebe Philo some while ago. The thing this middling collection illustrated best is the gulf between imaginative design and just designing a line. Let the first go, and you are no longer in a leadership position and, in this instance, heading toward the territory occupied, at a lower price point and with more spirit, by Marc by Marc Jacobs. With the best will in the world, this is not the sort of thing people come to Paris to see. "

And this on the heels of the Fall 2006 collection was an especially diappointing thud. I understand that the line is being designed by committee and therefore much creativity and vision would get muddled and murked down by too many cooks in the kitchen all of whom do not have what it takes to go it alone.

I live in hope that the new desinger Paul Melim (currently at Marni) can revive the quickly floundering favorite of mine. While this and the FAll 06 lines are not total busts, they just are not up to the Chloe standard set by Philo, who I say completely outshone McCartney. And in the mean time I'll live in the memory of Pheobe's last dance with Chloe, the uber perfect Spring 06 RTW collection.

Here is the best of what came down the Spring 07 runway. Thankfully there were plently of peices that I could still covet and take with me into dreamland.