Chloé Eyewear: The House That Invented Luxury Ready-to-Wear

Chloé holds a genuinely unusual place in fashion history: it's widely credited with inventing the concept of luxury ready-to-wear, or prêt-à-porter — an idea so fundamental to the modern fashion industry that it's easy to forget someone had to think of it first. That someone was Gaby Aghion, and her original instinct for relaxed, feminine elegance still defines the house's eyewear today.

A refugee's radical idea: Paris, 1952

Gaby Aghion was born Gabrielle Hanoka in 1921 in Alexandria, Egypt, to a family of Sephardic Jewish descent. She met her future husband, Raymond Aghion, at age seven, and the two married and moved to Paris together in 1945, fleeing the fragmentation of Egypt's communist movement, in which Raymond had been an active organizer. In Paris, Aghion founded Chloé in 1952, rejecting the rigid formality that defined 1950s haute couture in favor of soft, feminine, body-conscious clothing made from fine fabrics — a category she called "luxury prêt-à-porter." It was a genuinely radical idea at the time: fashionable clothing that was actually available off the rack, rather than custom-tailored exclusively for the wealthy.

Aghion named the label after a friend rather than using her own name, later explaining that it wouldn't have been well regarded at the time for a woman of her social standing to be seen working — and that she simply loved the roundness of the letters in "Chloé." She set up her earliest workshop in a maid's room above her own apartment, and in 1953 formed a formal partnership with Jacques Lenoir, who took over the business side of the company so Aghion could focus entirely on creative direction.

A debut over breakfast

Chloé held its first fashion show in 1956 not on a traditional runway, but at a breakfast at the Café de Flore — one of Aghion's favorite Parisian haunts and a well-known meeting place for young intellectuals in the 1940s and '50s. The collection, designed by Aghion herself, was made by an assistant who had previously worked under Christian Dior's mentor, Lucien Lelong. Aghion and Lenoir went on to hire a series of young, then-unknown designers who would go on to build significant careers of their own, including Christiane Bailly, Michèle Rosier, and Guy Paulin.

Karl Lagerfeld and decades of star designers

In 1964 (some accounts cite 1966), a young German designer named Karl Lagerfeld joined Chloé as head designer, beginning a relationship with the house that would continue, with a gap in the 1980s, until 1997. Under Lagerfeld, Chloé built a reputation through the 1960s and '70s for its bohemian, free-spirited aesthetic, dressing clients including Jackie Kennedy, Brigitte Bardot, and Grace Kelly. Aghion and Lenoir ran the house until 1985, when it was acquired by Alfred Dunhill Ltd. — now part of the Richemont Group, which continues to own Chloé today. Aghion remained closely connected to the house until her death in 2014.

Chloé's list of creative directors reads like a roll call of major fashion names: Martine Sitbon followed Lagerfeld's first stint, and in 1997, a 25-year-old Stella McCartney was appointed creative director almost immediately after graduating from Central Saint Martins. McCartney left in 2001 to build her own eponymous label, succeeded by Phoebe Philo, and later Clare Waight Keller, Natacha Ramsay-Levi, Gabriela Hearst, and Chemena Kamali — continuing Aghion's original vision of a house designed for women, largely by women.

Eyewear enters the collection

Chloé's eyewear has passed through several licensing partnerships over the decades: Marcolin beginning in 1998, Marchon Eyewear from 2012 to 2019, and Kering Eyewear since 2020. Each transition allowed the eyewear line to be produced alongside major manufacturing infrastructure while staying visually connected to Chloé's ready-to-wear collections each season.

A design language rooted in bohemian femininity

Chloé eyewear draws heavily on the house's founding aesthetic — soft, flowing silhouettes and a distinctly bohemian, free-spirited sensibility, expressed through gentle color palettes of beige, pink, and earthy neutral tones that echo the sand and light of Aghion's native Egypt. Signature pieces include the Bonnie frame, a 1970s-inspired silhouette with an infinity-loop shape and a signature drop-shaped bridge opening designed for adding personal eyewear jewelry, and the Rosie collection, known for its distinctive thick, beveled lenses available in heart, circle, flower, and square shapes. Frames are typically finished with fine, engraved filigree detailing on the temples, along with golden metal accents and rounded, retro-inspired shapes that connect the eyewear directly to Chloé's broader design codes.

Where the brand stands today

Chloé eyewear continues to be produced through Kering Eyewear, maintaining the same feminine, understated elegance that has run through every era of the house's leadership. Whether shaped by Lagerfeld's romanticism, McCartney's early confidence, or the more recent bohemian revival under Chemena Kamali, the eyewear collection remains a direct reflection of Aghion's founding instinct: relaxed, sophisticated clothing — and now eyewear — made for real women to actually wear.