The recent “Boho revival” trend turns around Chloé’s current creative director Chemena Kamali and her free-spirited designs. But Chloé’s archives certainly hold some boho bangers of its own. Just ask Rachel Sennott.
At the Sundance Film Festival over the weekend, the actress did her version of the trend’s revival by digging about twenty years back into the Chloé archives. Sennott, arriving to the Utah festival with her Bunnylovr director Katarina Zhu, was seen wearing a shaggy Penny Lane coat and a suede mini skirt. She paired those pieces with a Phoebe Philo-era Chloé handbag known as the Paddington. Sennott’s slouchy hobo bag features two buckles at the side and a giant gold lock strewn across the front.
Philo joined Chloé in 2001 and launched the Paddington, which draws its name from an area in London, in 2005 after the success of her Bracelet and Silverado accessories. The Paddington, was a cult-favorite that made it onto the arms of the era’s foremost fashionistas. Everyone from Halle Berry and Courtney Love to Nicky Hilton and Hillary Duff were seen wearing the luggage-inspired tote.
When the nearly three-pound bag debuted on the runway Vogue reported that “Every one of the 8,000 models created for spring 2005 sold out before arriving in stores.” The British paper The Telegraph even called the Paddington “the most wanted accessory in the history of the fashion business” at the time.
The Paddington would slowly fade in 2006 when Philo, who launched her eponymous label in October 2023, departed Chloé for Celine where she stayed until 2018. Around that same time, Chloé’s then-creative director Natacha Ramsay-Levi nodded to the Paddington with her Aby bag—a structured top handle number decorated with a brass lock similar to those made famous by Philo.
But considering Sennott’s revival of the Paddington and the general renaissance of Boho fashion, there’s perhaps no better time for the bag to make a comeback. Especially with someone like Chemena Kamali at the helm of Chloé.
