The Prodigal It Bag Returns: Welcome Back, Chloé Paddington

In 2005, Chloé’s Paddington bag was in the crook of every fashion darling’s arm, from Kate Moss and Sienna Miller to Halle Berry and Jennifer Lopez. Cut to 2025, and the east-west style, with its distinctive chunky padlock front and center, has found its way back into the wardrobes of tastemakers, including Katie Holmes, who carries a Paddington on her movie sets, and Dua Lipa, who totes it in Instagram outfit dumps.

This case of It-bag déjà vu comes down to one woman and one woman alone: Chemena Kamali. One of only a handful of women designers at the top level of luxury fashion, she joined Chloé as creative director in 2023, having started her career at the French fashion house as an intern during its Phoebe Philo era. The Chloé Paddington was actually designed by Philo for the Spring 2005 collection. Kamali brought it out of the vault as part of her Fall 2025 show for the brand, with none other than Alexa Chung walking it down the runway.

“As I started working on this collection, I felt that moving forward is just as important as honoring the past,” Kamali said in a press statement. “I thought about how we romanticize the past through an intuitive lens, blending […] what we once loved with what we love today—the memories of bygone eras.”

When reminiscing on Chloé's archive, Kamali knew there were few silhouettes more beloved than its padlocked Paddington.

Kamali’s resissued Paddington adheres to the original silhouette. (If the German designer strayed too far from its Philo-era design, the Chloé cult would riot.) But her redux does come with a few key tweaks: a lighter padlock and hardware, a more spacious shoulder drop, and a secured zip opening to ensure your belongings don’t spill out when carrying the bag as a modern bohème would (effortlessly, without concern for whether your Chapstick rolls out onto the floor).

What also remains is the exact same I-need-it-now effect on shoppers. In a 2009 Vogue article, fashion journalist Sarah Mower reported that “every one of the 8,000 [Philo’s Paddington bags] made in Spring 2005 was spoken for before it reached the store.” Following Chloé’s Fall 2025 show, The RealReal “saw a 48% spike in demand for the bag week over week,” says Noelle Sciacca, the secondhand luxury reseller’s associate director of partnerships.

After months of non-celebrity fashion girls clamoring to buy the new bag on pre-order, Kamali’s take on Chloé’s Paddington bag is ready to shop. Starting on September 24, it'll be available in two sizes—small for $2,290 or medium for $2,750.

The Paddington reintroduces itself with a black-and-white, David Sims-shot campaign starring Kendall Jenner, Aimee Lou Wood, and Meovv's Anna.

“I wanted to capture the Paddington as it lives today, spontaneous, not precious, a bag that has become part of women’s lives, carrying both intimacy and character,": Kamali said, in a statement. "Captured in Paris, Chloé’s hometown, the images have a natural sensuality and ease, while paying homage to the spirit of 1970s French cinema.”

Like Philo, Kamali understands that the enduring allure of Chloé lies in its dynamic understanding of womanhood. “Chloé embodies a unique balance of soft strength, blending natural femininity, sensuality, and lightness with independence and freedom,” Kamali said, in the same press release. “This soft strength is really what I have always been drawn to.”

The Paddington bag is emblematic of this ethos. Girlish yet grunge, rendered in supple grain leather and adorned with chunky hardware, it’s a bag you can take for after-hours drinks with girlfriends or to a café for a 9 a.m. cappuccino ahead of a day of running errands. Wherever you want to go, the free-spirited bag can meet the moment.