Mood of the Moment: Gaby Aghion and the House of Chloé

The installation at the Jewish Museum in New York for Mood of the Moment: Gaby Aghion and the House of Chloé, designed by Elliott Barnes, A.I.A, is inspired by the world of fashion as well as by the life and times of Gaby Aghion, Chloé’s founder.

Just as fashion designers drape their models to make a garment, I was inspired to “drape” the interior of the second-floor rooms of the museum with a sustainable material to create a backdrop for the story of Gaby Aghion and the work of the House of Chloé designers.

The intent behind the concept of draping the rooms, with a white sustainable fibrous paper used in garment conservation (which Barnes I first saw in the House of Chloé archives), extends beyond the gesture that connects the installation to the world of fashion design. It is also a strategy for calmy framing the articulate ceiling detailing and the historic wooden casework of the museum’s interior architecture. The opposition between the orthogonal lines of the museum and the flowing spaces developed by the installation is a direct reference to the fluidity of the Chloé look and more specifically to the life of Gaby Aghion, who proposed a unique way of thinking about elegance for women as a counterpoint to the stricter canons of post-war Parisian fashion.

An organized, yet serendipitous, promenade to discover the House of Chloé and its designs, begins in the lift lobby. Moving fluidly around softly lit curved backdrops and rounded platforms, iconic designs by Karl Lagerfeld, Martine Sitbon, Stella McCartney, Phoebe Philo et. al. are presented. The promenade through the history of Chloé culminates in a fashion dreamscape of floating signature Chloé blouses in the colors of Gaby Aghion’s beloved Egypt.

Through the simple orchestration of innovative sustainable materials and soft lit moments the exhibition embraces the spirit of Gaby Aghion and the House of Chloé.