“J’ai toujours pensé que les femmes étaient plus belles nues.”

Gaby Aghion

Parisian department store Printemps organized for the 60th anniversary of fashion house Chloé a fashion event and elegant windows featuring some of  brand’s iconic items. Fashion illustrator Sandra Suy did a series of wonderful sketches pointing out those Chloé IT pieces, art work that can be seen in the special pop-up store done for this occasion. After all, who wasn’t in love with Chloé style and products after Stella McCartney and Phoebe Philo gave her the new and romantic direction we all know?

I still have my first pair of Chloé sunglasses – large Pilot inspirate brown glasses with a little strass heart on it all my friends teased me about. It was worth a little fortune, but being Stella McCartney’s last house collection, I decided I must have it.

 

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Illustrations signed Sandra Suy

 

Chloé was imagined as a “luxury ready-to-wear” affordable brand in full Haute Coute era when created in 1952 by Gaby Aghion, an intellectual and wealthy family – immediately available clothing of excelent quality with little alteration to be done. Born Gabrielle Hanoka in 1921 in Alexandria, Egypt and daughter of a cigarettes manufacturer, she married Raymond Ghion before moving to Paris in 1945. 

Gaby decided to name her brand after one of her close friends, Chloé Huysmans, as she was thinking that her own name reminded a fortuneteller. The brand became in the 70’s one of the important fashion names and created the luxury prêt-à-porter where clients were Brigitte Bardot, Maria Callas, Jackie Kennedy or Grace Kelly. Karl Lagerfeld was one of the few male artistic directors of the house hired by Aghion in 1965 and left 20 years later, in 1992, for Chanel.

After Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney, aged 25, was the new designer – the brand got a sexy, romantic, quite cheeky new style and customers are Stella’s famous girlfriends such as Liv Tyler or Kate Moss.
In 2001, Phoebe Philo, until then Stella’s assistent, become head of design, after Stella’s departure. Phoebe loved accessories and the first IT bag Paddigton was born and this time Natalie Portman or Sofia Coppola were among a very fashion aware clientela.

Printemps imagined the re-edition of 16 iconic pieces, a perfume bar Chloé and exclusive pastry by Hugo & Victor created for the special occasion. Besides Stella’s 2001 pineapple T-shirt or Karl’s 1978 printed maxi dress, Phoebe’s shirt with frills is right next to the famous Paddington bag. So, hope you are ready for a shopping week-end to Paris and Printemps’s Chloé pop-up store!

We took a nice walk on a cold Saturday and admired the windows – starting with 1st of March, the items will be available online as well on net-a-porter.com, Selfridges London and Barney’s New York.

 

 

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Gaby Aghion, founder of French Fashion house Chloé

 

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Gaby Aghion and Karl Lagerfeld

 

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Karl Lagerfeld with the model Ines de la Fressange at Chloé





 

Thank you for inspiration and credits photo:

http://cocosteaparty.com

http://blog.stylesight.com/

and great illustrations of Sandra Suy (source Pinterest)