There is a certain lineage to the way a woman enters the world of fashion—a rite of passage that, in centuries past, might have been marked by a corset’s first tight lacing or the rustle of a debutante’s gown. Today, that narrative unfolds through the lens of a campaign. Apple Martin, daughter of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin, has stepped into her latest role as the face of Chloé à la Plage, the French house’s high-summer capsule. It is a fitting tableau for a young woman who made her society debut at Le Bal des Débutantes in 2024, a tradition that once demanded the strictest of undergarments—whalebone stays and petticoats—to shape a woman into a vision of propriety. Now, Martin wears airy broderie anglaise blouses and swimsuits printed with parrots perched on hibiscus, a far cry from the restrictive layers of yesteryear.
Photographed by David Sims against an imagined shoreline where giant shells rise like something from Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus,” the campaign evokes what creative director Chemena Kamali calls “barefoot reveries suspended in an endless summer afternoon.” This is the second iteration of Chloé à la Plage, following last year’s inaugural campaign fronted by Claudia Schiffer. The collection, arriving in boutiques and online Tuesday, is a study in languid luxury: raffia handbags, jelly mules, and diaphanous dresses that whisper rather than command. For European fashion houses, beachwear capsules have become a post-pandemic strategy to capture the tourism boom, but Chloé’s approach feels more intimate—a nod to the surreal poetry of summer. Martin, now 21 and a college student with a budding résumé that includes campaigns for Self-Portrait and GapStudio (alongside her mother), brings a radiant, natural ease. It is a quiet evolution from the corseted debutante to the barefoot dreamer, and one that reminds us how lingerie—and the liberation from it—has always shaped the way we dress for the season.
Originally reported by WWD