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After months of speculation, it’s official: Natacha Ramsay-Levi is the new creative director of Chloé. The French designer arrives at Chloé following the departure of Clare Waight Keller, who held the role of creative director for six years. Ramsay-Levi is leaving her position as creative director of women’s ready-to-wear at Louis Vuitton for the Chloé spot. The Spring 2018 Chloé collection will be Ramsay-Levi’s solo debut in the limelight of Paris Fashion Week.
The designer’s trans-Parisian move from Louis Vuitton’s Seine-adjacent headquarters in the First Arrondissement to Chloé’s in the Eighth is no small matter. If you know Ramsay-Levi’s name, you know her as the right-hand woman to Nicolas Ghesquière, who she first worked with during an internship at Balenciaga in 2002 following a course at France’s Studio Berçot fashion school. At Balenciaga, she rose through the ranks, becoming the head designer of Balenciaga’s women’s pre-collections in 2007, and its design director in 2011. When Ghesquière left from the brand in 2013, she went, too, eventually taking up residence months later at Louis Vuitton.
According to an earlier report about Ramsay-Levi’s Chloé role, she operates as the go-between for Ghesquière and the Louis Vuitton design studio, acting as their primary point of contact as they translate the artistic director’s vision. In a 2015 interview, she said of her Vuitton colleagues, “The team is like a family to me,” a fact that a cursory scroll through her Instagram—or that of team Louis Vuitton members like Marie-Amélie Sauvé, Camille Miceli, and Florent Buonomano—will confirm. Beyond Louis Vuitton, she has said the creatives who inspire her include jewelry designer Ligia Dias and stylist Camille Bidault Waddington, who Ramsay-Levi calls her muse. “Unfortunately, we have never worked together,” she said of Bidault Waddington. “That would be a dream.” Consider this the baseline of what you might expect from the new Chloé: designs by an unfussy Frenchwoman styled by the reigning French queen of déshabillé cool. Now, that’s a Paris Fashion Week debut worth looking forward to.