Lockdown University Lockdown University Calendar Calendar Library Library Faculty Faculty About About
Search Search Search
Lecture

Kristina Parsons
The Jewish Museum Presents: Virtual Curator Talk: Mood of the Moment: Gaby Aghion and the House of Chloé

Monday 22.01.2024
View Transcript

Summary

Kristina Parsons, Leon Levy Assistant Curator at the Jewish Museum discusses the first museum exhibition honoring the visionary Jewish entrepreneur Gaby Aghion and her legacy as the founder of the French fashion house Chloé.

Highlighting Aghion’s vision of effortless, luxurious fashion, and the work of iconic designers who began their careers with the brand, including Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney, and Phoebe Philo, the exhibition showcases Aghion as a leader whose work altered the course of the global fashion industry in liberating women’s bodies from the restrictive attitudes and styles of the time, as well as pioneering the emergence of luxury ready-to-wear. By capturing the mood of the moment, Aghion founded a fashion brand characterized by an easy elegance.

Arts and Culture 676 lectures

Kristina Parsons

an image of Kristina Parsons
Kristina Parsons is the Leon Levy Assistant Curator at the Jewish Museum in New York. Her research centers around material culture, technology, and migration in the twentieth century. Parsons has worked on exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and most recently has worked on the Jewish Museum exhibitions Jonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always Running and New York: 1962-1964.
Gaby was 24 when she moved from Egypt to Paris. She was newly married, and I think very happy to move with her husband to what they saw as really the seat and origin point of intellectual movements, like Communism, but also Surrealist art movements, that had been so influential for her formation in her early years.
She does. Claudia maybe can speak to Philippe Aghion, Gaby’s dear son, who is actually coming to visit us very, very soon. He is a very well-respected economist in his own right. And his daughter Mikhaela is also a really lovely kind of ambassador of her grandmother’s legacy, really embodying much of Gaby’s spirit and remains involved in the Chloe brand today.
I do think that Egypt really remained a very key inspiration throughout her life, not only in the ways in which the women around her in Alexandria in the ‘20s, '30s, and '40s were dressing, but also in its kind of memories for her. She talks so much about how the Egyptian desert remained such a core part of how she saw colour and why she loved silk. So you really see those influences continue in the colour palette of Chloe and also in the forms of dressing that she promoted at the brand.
Library

Browse all lectures, filter by speaker or topic.

Triangle button
Calendar

See upcoming lecture schedule.

Triangle button
Go to calendar Go to lectures area Go to faculty area Get information Go to contact area