Chemena Kamali wears her long chocolate brown hair all the way down over her ­shoulders to the waistband of her blue jeans. And every time I’ve encountered her, she’s been beaming a smile.

Kamali, who was born and raised in Germany, studied for her masters in London, and now resides in Paris as the creative director of Chloé , has the soft, melancholic presence of a Pre-Raphaelite muse. But at work, the designer is ferocity personified: a sharp, unwavering perfectionist.

Before we spoke for this story, Kamali inquired about the format—a written-­through profile or a question-and-answer session—to better calibrate the flow of her responses. And for this picture, she wanted to determine how much jewelry should be visible.

Then we needed to ensure that the Ethiopian supermodel and activist Liya Kebede and the British socialite Tish Weinstock did not pose too close together, as they were both in white lace. Kamali is so precise and so insistent that when Claudia Schiffer could not fly into Paris for the shoot, which also features model Pat Cleveland , actor Dree Hemingway , ­models Jessica Miller and Julia Stegner, filmmaker Gia Coppola , and perennial It girl Alexa Chung , Kamali moved heaven and earth—and arguably made one too many phone calls—to materialize the second portrait in this story.

Despite her hippie airs, Kamali gets what she wants. Kamali sees Schiffer as the embodiment of continuity at Chloé: a fellow German whose modeling bona fides include serving not just as Kamali’s muse, but also that of Karl Lagerfeld , another much-mythologized German who before reshaping Chanel transformed Chloé from the 1960s through the ’80s, and again in the ’90s, alongside its founder, Gaby Aghion.

When she arrived in late 2023 at Chloé, a French fashion house built on free-­spiritedness and some very good, very frilly dresses, Kamali was thrust into the spotlight from the unknown deputy of Anthony Vaccarello at Saint Laurent . She was tasked with reinvigorating a brand that had become an unsolved equation after a slew of less memorable stints from designers including Gabriela Hearst and Natacha Ramsay-Levi.

Her appointment was somewhat expected: She started her career at Chloé as an intern for Phoebe Philo in the 2000s, then returned as design director for Clare Waight Keller in the 2010s. “My relationship to Chloé obviously is a very special one,” Kamali says.

“It’s been quite close and very personal throughout my entire career.”