PARIS

A PIN dropped.

Twenty feet from where the designer Clare Waight Keller was sitting in the offices of Chloé on the Avenue Percier, it slipped from the hands of an assistant as he adjusted the hem of a crisp white popover top, worn by the 16-year-old English model Rosie Tapner, who had the sniffles. You could hear the plink of metal as it struck the painted wood floor.

It was proverbially quiet in the Chloé showroom, three days before Ms. Waight Keller’s spring runway show here, as critical decisions were being made about the hair and makeup, the order the clothes would be shown, whether the colors and proportions were just right. A steady stream of guests came and went. A plastic box of Haribo gummi candies that had been full the day before was half-empty, but the detail that spoke loudest was the lack of noise.

In the year since Ms. Waight Keller, formerly the designer of Pringle of Scotland, became the creative director at Chloé, many visitors have noted the remarkable calmness that radiates from her studio. That, and the fact that roughly 80 percent of the hundreds of employees at the company are women, which is a point of pride at a house that has projected an aura of femininity for 60 years.

Guido Palau, the hairstylist, proposed a loosely tied ponytail, sort of half up and half down, with a deep part inspired by Twiggy. Ms. Waight Keller and her team considered whether it looked modern enough, or cool, or sufficiently effortless. They debated, then asked to see another model. Mr. Palau, in mock exasperation, said, “Oh, my God, how many girls are in this room?”