She has come straight from the Vogue shoot in the cavernous Chloé Maison, an ambitious five-floor renovation project 30 seconds from the brand’s Avenue Percier headquarters. Its endless Haussmann-style rooms are soon to be filled with an archive, an exhibition and events space, VIP fitting rooms and a press showroom, and parts will be open to the public, including the exhibition of Guy Bourdin’s photography for Chloé, which runs until September 3. It’s fitting that the new creative director should arrive just as the paint is drying.
KARIM SADLI
But if the scale of this project is to be expected of a brand with such blue-chip French fashion credentials and commercial clout as Chloé (this year it will open 12 stores, including a new London flagship), the appointment of Ramsay-Levi is a little more surprising. When her predecessor Clare Waight Keller announced in January she would be leaving after six years at the helm, Ramsay-Levi – a relative unknown – was not the obvious candidate. A devotee of Nicolas Ghesquière, she rose through the ranks to become his design deputy at Balenciaga and then Louis Vuitton over a 15-year period. Hertaste for hard-edged, futuristic androgyny was, on paper, at odds with Chloé’s soft-focus, bohemian flou.
We order coffee and tiny cubes of chocolate arrive alongside. Natacha is wearing a white T-shirt, a black ruffled Balenciaga skirt (“old, by Nicolas”) and cowboy-style Louis Vuitton boots. She looks simultaneously younger and older than the brooding photographs that accompanied the news announcing her appointment in March: younger, because she is all smiles and no make-up; older, because she has presence informed by typical French candour. She has spent the past few weeks getting to know her team, scouring the archive, adjusting to a fast-paced schedule (“meetings and meetings and meetings”), and beginning in earnest to design her debut collection. Nothing so far has surprised her.
“Surprise would not be the good word,” she smiles, the first of many corrections she will make to my questions over the course of our meeting. “It was exactly what they told me, you know. At Chloé, everybody is luminous, joyful, people get along very well together… I need to be in a position where I feel we are all working in the same team, building the same thing. I like to be super open about what I do.”
Super open, and super precise. Ramsay-Levi knows where she is going with the 65-year-old brand, exuding the preternatural self-confidence that first endeared the 37-year-old to Chloé president Geoffroy de La Bourdonnaye when they met. “She understood Chloé straight away. She was very compelling,” recalls de La Bourdonnaye. “Chloé is always about freedom. It is very democratic, it does not impose. It is always of the moment, and Natacha understands that.” Her relative youth is another plus point. “I met Gaby Aghion, the founder of Chloé, many times, and Gaby always said to me that youth is very important. What Natacha has is the savoir-faire of the couture atelier, and the savoir-être of the cool young person.”“Every woman can recognise herself with Chloé. You can really take it and make it personal”
Ramsay-Levi’s vision for Chloé is pragmatic. She is keen to emphasise the invitations to personality that the Chloé girl has always been able to seize upon, and frequently returns to its impressive roster of designers – spanning Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney and Phoebe Philo, among others. “It’s a house that is about joy, it’s about naturalness, easiness, it’s about femininity. It’s something between maybe the street, the urban style, that has something very easy, and also the sophistication.” She pauses for breath. “Every woman can recognise herself with Chloé. You can really take it and make it personal.”
Tellingly, she doesn’t see the brand as bohemian – that’s not her style. She will undoubtedly give it back some streetwise boyishness for her first show in September, perhaps pairing those classic floaty lace confections with some tomboy suiting – but she shies from the idea of power. She prefers the term strength. “When I think about Chloé, I think about very delicate blouses, something that is pretty sophisticated.” Questions of how her futuristic design principles will evolve to incorporate Chloé’s lightness of spirit are immediately dismissed: “I am not doing Natacha’s brand, I am
doing Chloé’s brand. The bags have to stay Chloé, the clothes have to stay Chloé.” Store interiors will also remain in their current guise, though she admits the show location will no longer be the Grand Palais.
But if the scale of this project is to be expected of a brand with such blue-chip French fashion credentials and commercial clout as Chloé (this year it will open 12 stores, including a new London flagship), the appointment of Ramsay-Levi is a little more surprising. When her predecessor Clare Waight Keller announced in January she would be leaving after six years at the helm, Ramsay-Levi – a relative unknown – was not the obvious candidate. A devotee of Nicolas Ghesquière, she rose through the ranks to become his design deputy at Balenciaga and then Louis Vuitton over a 15-year period. Hertaste for hard-edged, futuristic androgyny was, on paper, at odds with Chloé’s soft-focus, bohemian flou.
We order coffee and tiny cubes of chocolate arrive alongside. Natacha is wearing a white T-shirt, a black ruffled Balenciaga skirt (“old, by Nicolas”) and cowboy-style Louis Vuitton boots. She looks simultaneously younger and older than the brooding photographs that accompanied the news announcing her appointment in March: younger, because she is all smiles and no make-up; older, because she has presence informed by typical French candour. She has spent the past few weeks getting to know her team, scouring the archive, adjusting to a fast-paced schedule (“meetings and meetings and meetings”), and beginning in earnest to design her debut collection. Nothing so far has surprised her.
“Surprise would not be the good word,” she smiles, the first of many corrections she will make to my questions over the course of our meeting. “It was exactly what they told me, you know. At Chloé, everybody is luminous, joyful, people get along very well together… I need to be in a position where I feel we are all working in the same team, building the same thing. I like to be super open about what I do.”
Super open, and super precise. Ramsay-Levi knows where she is going with the 65-year-old brand, exuding the preternatural self-confidence that first endeared the 37-year-old to Chloé president Geoffroy de La Bourdonnaye when they met. “She understood Chloé straight away. She was very compelling,” recalls de La Bourdonnaye. “Chloé is always about freedom. It is very democratic, it does not impose. It is always of the moment, and Natacha understands that.” Her relative youth is another plus point. “I met Gaby Aghion, the founder of Chloé, many times, and Gaby always said to me that youth is very important. What Natacha has is the savoir-faire of the couture atelier, and the savoir-être of the cool young person.”“Every woman can recognise herself with Chloé. You can really take it and make it personal”
Ramsay-Levi’s vision for Chloé is pragmatic. She is keen to emphasise the invitations to personality that the Chloé girl has always been able to seize upon, and frequently returns to its impressive roster of designers – spanning Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney and Phoebe Philo, among others. “It’s a house that is about joy, it’s about naturalness, easiness, it’s about femininity. It’s something between maybe the street, the urban style, that has something very easy, and also the sophistication.” She pauses for breath. “Every woman can recognise herself with Chloé. You can really take it and make it personal.”
Tellingly, she doesn’t see the brand as bohemian – that’s not her style. She will undoubtedly give it back some streetwise boyishness for her first show in September, perhaps pairing those classic floaty lace confections with some tomboy suiting – but she shies from the idea of power. She prefers the term strength. “When I think about Chloé, I think about very delicate blouses, something that is pretty sophisticated.” Questions of how her futuristic design principles will evolve to incorporate Chloé’s lightness of spirit are immediately dismissed: “I am not doing Natacha’s brand, I am
doing Chloé’s brand. The bags have to stay Chloé, the clothes have to stay Chloé.” Store interiors will also remain in their current guise, though she admits the show location will no longer be the Grand Palais.
What key pieces will she focus on for her first collection? “It’s kind of a cliché to even say them,” she sighs. “Of course it’s the blouse, it’s the pants, it’s the cape, it’s the long dress, the mousseline, the lace – Chloé is very diverse. But I think what is more important than picking up the pieces – it’s about the attitude.” She leans back into the dark green sofa. “It’s the way you take this DNA and make it talk with the present. And you mix it. And you make it modern. Add a bit of audacity.”
Ramsay-Levi is Paris personified. Born and raised in the city, she originally wanted to be a historian, but spent more time during her history degree wrapping fabrics around her body and making clothes for a “super naive” collection with a friend. “One day I realised I was going in the wrong direction for myself and I wanted to be creative. I wanted to dare. So I changed,” she says, simply. Her parents had their reservations about fashion but she enrolled at Studio Berçot fashion school nevertheless. She set her sights on Balenciaga, then helmed by Nicolas Ghesquière, and begged for an internship. Before long she had ingratiated herself with the tiny team by making coffee, and quickly clicked with Ghesquière.
She describes her time there as “a love affair”. She has hardly left his side for 15 years: when he left Balenciaga, where he eventually appointed her creative director, he took her to Louis Vuitton to work on prêt-à-porter. “He taught me everything… When I arrived [at Balenciaga] I was obsessed already with what he was doing. I felt it was so strong, I really wanted to be that woman. I thought it was the coolest thing ever,” she enthuses. His influence will undoubtedly inform her work at Chloé. “I always think about him, nearly every day,” she smiles bashfully. A topic she returns to continually is his skill in mixing: “He can mix high-end fashion with something that is very pop, very easy to understand.”
She switches off from fashion via family. She lives in central Paris, and is fiercely private about her life outside work. She has a four-year-old son, Balthus, with Olivier Zahm, the provocative founder of Purple magazine, who once publicised their painful break-up on his website. The couple are no longer together, and she is raising his 12-year-old daughter from a previous relationship. “It’s the most important thing, spending time with the kids. You forget everything – you don’t have a choice.”
Ramsay-Levi is Paris personified. Born and raised in the city, she originally wanted to be a historian, but spent more time during her history degree wrapping fabrics around her body and making clothes for a “super naive” collection with a friend. “One day I realised I was going in the wrong direction for myself and I wanted to be creative. I wanted to dare. So I changed,” she says, simply. Her parents had their reservations about fashion but she enrolled at Studio Berçot fashion school nevertheless. She set her sights on Balenciaga, then helmed by Nicolas Ghesquière, and begged for an internship. Before long she had ingratiated herself with the tiny team by making coffee, and quickly clicked with Ghesquière.
She describes her time there as “a love affair”. She has hardly left his side for 15 years: when he left Balenciaga, where he eventually appointed her creative director, he took her to Louis Vuitton to work on prêt-à-porter. “He taught me everything… When I arrived [at Balenciaga] I was obsessed already with what he was doing. I felt it was so strong, I really wanted to be that woman. I thought it was the coolest thing ever,” she enthuses. His influence will undoubtedly inform her work at Chloé. “I always think about him, nearly every day,” she smiles bashfully. A topic she returns to continually is his skill in mixing: “He can mix high-end fashion with something that is very pop, very easy to understand.”
She switches off from fashion via family. She lives in central Paris, and is fiercely private about her life outside work. She has a four-year-old son, Balthus, with Olivier Zahm, the provocative founder of Purple magazine, who once publicised their painful break-up on his website. The couple are no longer together, and she is raising his 12-year-old daughter from a previous relationship. “It’s the most important thing, spending time with the kids. You forget everything – you don’t have a choice.”
Ramsay-Levi has the unabashed confidence of someone who runs with a cool crowd and is attuned to success. She doesn’t do self-doubt. “I have always been like that in my life. Timings are always good.” Of her career at Chloé, she doesn’t foresee any challenges. “The idea of ‘challenge’, it’s the idea of climbing a mountain,” she frowns. “I don’t feel I am climbing a mountain. I feel I am just walking strongly on a path that I love. So, no, I think the question is... I hope everybody will like it and want to wear it. I think that’s the only question.”
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