Her name was Gabriella Hanoka, but the fashion world would come to know her as Gaby Aghion. Born in Alexandria on a March morning in 1921, in the golden light of cosmopolitan Egypt, she already carried within her that blend of Eastern grace and French audacity that would one day revolutionize couture.

In 1952, in a Paris still marked by postwar austerity, Gaby founded a house that would become legendary: Chloé the first name of a friend, Chloé Huisman a symbol of youth and freedom. She did not simply create a brand; she created a concept: luxury ready-to-wear, a visionary idea at a time when fashion swore only by haute couture.

With six designs drawn by her own hand and entrusted to a talented seamstress, Gaby walked the boutiques of Paris, knocking on doors with the quiet determination of someone who knows she carries a revolution within her. Soon, the elegant women of Saint-Germain and the free spirits of Montparnasse recognized themselves in her creations fluid, feminine, modern. Her connections in Parisian high society did the rest; the name Chloé slowly found its place in the firmament of fashion. And soon after, she would discover Karl Lagerfeld.

But if we speak of her this morning, it is also because Gaby Aghion’s legacy goes far beyond the elegance of fabrics. Her son, Philippe Aghion, professor at the Collège de France, has just been awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. To the man who declares that “the key factor of economic power is technological leadership,” one might reply that in his family, leadership whether creative or intellectual seems to be written in their genes.

Thus, by a gentle irony of Darwin’s law, there are lineages where evolution continues to reach new heights: after the mother who liberated women through fashion, comes the son who illuminates the world through thought.

FM