For Creative Director Clare Waight Keller’s last collection after a 6 year tenure, the Chloé Fall 2017 line-up saw the Chloé girl escaping down a rabbit hole of decades in a dream world of psychedelic optimism.

At the runway show, the Human League sang “Don’t You Want Me” as the models made their finale lap and Waight Keller came out to a standing ovation for her hands-in-the-air last bow. It was hard not to read a message into that.

Like Phoebe Philo and Stella McCartney, other British women who held the creative director post at this French company for shorter stints in the late ’90s and early aughts, Waight Keller liked to round out her offerings with smart tailoring.

A greatest hits collection was not her inclination this season. Rather, as she pointed out backstage, her aim was to look forward with her tailoring, emphasizing a strong shoulder and dropping the waist on full-leg pleated trousers, a style she hadn’t tried before at Chloé. This puts her in league with other designers who are rejiggering and elongating the silhouette for Fall via hip-slung pants. Likewise, her boxy men’s jackets in vaguely grungy plaids keyed into the season’s major trends. Otherwise, the collection featued cutting dresses ’60s-short and decorating them with just-this-side-of-psychedelic Alice in Wonderland illustrations, then accessorizing them with brogued Mary Janes and T-Bar pumps, and the new rounded Pixie bag with bracelet handles.

See the #chloeGIRLS take their front row seats, go backstage backstage and discover the new Fall 2017 collection at the Grand Palais – Salon d’Honneur in Paris.