Chloe Attitudes

“What more can you ask for?”

This seems to be a reading season fraught with great surprises, proven once again by Chloe Attitudes. Defying expectation, this book should be required reading for the novice as well as the jaded. Ms. Mower tells the story of how a brand was developed from square one by one very determined, bright, insightful, and talented woman . . . Gaby Aghion.

More than half of this wonderful examination of the brand we know as Chloe focuses on the first 30 years, taking us to around 1987, the time at which Ms. Aghion sold her interest in the firm following the 20-year tenure of Karl Lagerfeld.

Make no mistake: The true gravitas of this brand was developed under the keen and watchful eyes of Ms. Aghion and her stable of young talent that designed many of the collections. But it really was not until the arrival of Mr. Lagerfeld that the name Chloe was splashed over just about every fashion periodical in existence here and abroad.

“Evanescent, fleeting, fluid, light as air, his clothes were a medium for the freedoms and fantasies of a generation. His Chloe girls swirled, lunged, and smoldered across magazine layouts, hand in hand with the wildly creative photographers who were on the loose in Paris.”

Chloe Attitudes is as much about the company as it is about the era in which it all happened. These were the absolute glory days of fashion when the apex of fashion was Paris, and the network of high fashion included names such as Antonio, Newton, Piel, Saint Laurent, Bourdin, Patty Cleveland, Donna Jordan, Marie Helvin, and more. Don’t know who they are? Well then you don’t know much about fashion at its zenith.

Chloe Attitudes provides the reader with abbreviated text that is wonderfully and colorfully written to speak to the times as well as to fashion itself. This was the era of The Beautiful Fall, which spoke a lot more heavily to the private and behind the scenes action in the fashion world.

Let’s just say Chloe Attitudes is a must read. In fact, let’s go a step further and say that not only will you be entertained but you will be informed and educated. What more can you ask for?