The Woman Behind Chloé’s Legacy of Effortless Chic

Depending on when you became familiar with Chloé, you may associate the brand with Stella McCartney’s bananas, Karl Lagerfeld’s kaleidoscopic prints, or Phoebe Philo’s iconic padlock bag, but surprisingly few fashion lovers know about the woman behind Chloé, founder Gaby Aghion. Mood of the moment: Gaby Aghion and the house of Chloé, open now at The Jewish Museum in New York City, aims to set that straight. Curated by Choghakate Kazarian, the first major museum show on the legacy of Aghion’s work tells the multifaceted story of the French fashion powerhouse in all its delicate detail.

Aghion was born to upper-class Jewish parents in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1921. It was customary for upper-class Egyptian Jews to speak French, and Aghion and her mother were particularly taken with French culture and fashion. In 1945, Aghion moved to Paris with her husband, where they became fixtures of the Left Bank. In 1952, bored of not working, she founded Chloé. “People told me that because I was rich, I shouldn’t have to work. But I never asked anyone for their permission,” said Aghion in an interview in 2012, two years before her death. “I was responsible for my own life! I wanted to have an activity of my own—not to make money, but because creating something of your own brings you great happiness and pride.”

When creating Chloé—named after a friend, and because she liked the roundness of the letters and the Frenchness of the name—Aghion was not interested in haute couture but solely focused on ready-to-wear. Her first show, in 1957, balanced the playfulness and femininity that would become cornerstones of the brand, with models strolling through breakfast at the Café de Flore. Brasserie Lipp and Closerie des Lilas served as backdrops for her “café shows” well into the ’70s, their publicness adding to the bourgeois-bohème spirit that Chloé and Aghion embodied.

“This was the antithesis, if you're thinking about the mid-to-early-fifties look,” says Claudia Gould, the museum’s Director Emerita and the Project Director of the exhibition. “She wanted accessibility, freedom, spirit—the mood of the moment, as we called the show. She had this certain love of life. And, of course, she was inspired by the colors of the sand of Egypt.” One of the few Aghion pieces in the show is, in fact, a wool jersey dress the color of sand. Chloé’s lifelong dedication to warm neutrals is most striking in the exhibit’s blouse room, a multi-platformed spectacle of over 50 blouses designed by the house’s creative directors over the years. The blouses also speak to Chloé’s consistency and Aghion’s enduring vision for the brand; the delicate tops floating on hangers are so harmonious it’s hard to believe they represent eight different designers.

While there’s a feminine practicality associated with Chloé, there’s also a wonderfully quirky side. Several of Lagerfeld’s trompe l’œil dresses surprise and delight; notably, a royal blue number with 3D sequined faucets streaming silver beads of “water” down the dress’s back. Lagerfeld’s sense of humor is mirrored during McCartney’s reign, during which she designed cheeky t-shirts that insist you “KEEP YOUR BANANAS OF MY MELONS” alongside horse-printed dresses. One of the most exciting parts of the exhibition is seeing just how kindred Gaby Aghion and Gabriela Hearst are, not just in name but in aesthetics, the similarities of which are especially evident in two Hearst designs, agauzy taupe blouse and a “Puffcho,” an ecru-striped poncho destined for a winter evening in Cairo.

What Mood of the moment does best is capture Chloé’s particular genre of effortlessness. The show flows easily and happily through the many waves of Chloé’s life, celebrating the designers who contributed to Aghion’s legacy and who inherently understood Aghion’s ethos of creating everyday elegance. “I started Chloé because I loved the idea of couture, but found the concept a little out of date—a little artificial,” Aghion stated in 1980. “A thing of beauty and quality should be seen on women in the streets.”