What’s Happening: A retrospective of the French fashion house and Gaby Aghion, its Jewish-Egyptian founder, celebrates the beauty and longevity of the modern woman with elegant, understated scenography by celebrated interior designer Elliott Barnes.

The Download: It is impossible to overstate the difficulty and pain of the present moment for Jewish people everywhere, including New York City, in light of the recent terrorist attacks led by Hamas against Israel. Thus, the mood was solemn—yet the atmosphere ethereal—at yesterday’s preview of “Mood of the Moment: Gaby Aghion & the House of Chloé.” The Jewish Museum’s latest exhibition is the first retrospective of the 70-year-old house founded by the Jewish Parisian-by-way-of-Egypt in 1952. Since then, Karl Lagerfeld, Clare Waight Keller, Phoebe Philo, Stella McCartney, and Gabriela Hearst have followed in Aghion’s footsteps to shepherd through her visionary perspective of the modern woman and the ways in which the fashion industry must serve her.

This show faces the unenviable challenge of bridging a considerable time-culture gap. Aghion’s vision of modernity centered around breaking out of stuffy salon-style couture shows and into high-end ready-to-wear with corsetless dressing for the modern woman. Compare that to the ‘90s, when McCartney’s irreverent spring/summer 2001 debut featured a “Keep Your Banana Off My Melons” graphic tee inspired by Bill Clinton’s sex scandal.

For that, former museum director Claudia Gould tapped the decorated interior designer Elliott Barnes, a Parisian-by-way-of-New York, to bring understated elegance through spatial storytelling. “In the ‘90s, with changing social values and mores, women were more expressive,” he says. “They’re more expressive than in the 1950s, but the very passionate and liberated woman of the ‘50s, that’s the same mindset of the woman in the ‘90s.” Barnes also posits an interest in sustainability as a through line that transcends changes in creative leadership. A narrative arc links the handicraft of Aghion’s Chloé to the stirrings of environmental concerns in McCartney’s mind during her turn at the brand’s helm, and, finally, Hearst’s championing of deadstock fabrics.

In the show, however, Barnes lets the clothes speak for themselves. He often employs Tyvek, an odorless polyethylene synthetic material used for museum conservation and construction, and lauded for its recyclability. Under the museum lights, it has the elegant, subdued luster of a silk crepe de chine, and recalls the ruffled neckline of one of Aghion’s early dresses, or one of Hearst’s more recent, dreamy blouses. “The installation takes cues from the way a stylist works,” he tells Surface. “A stylist will drape a model, and I thought we could drape the museum.”

In Their Own Words: “Whether it’s the first or the fifth [exhibition], that doesn’t really matter to me,” Barnes tells Surface about how he crafted the show’s scenography. “What’s important is to understand what the brand is about and what Gaby Aghion was about; to look at her life and her work to find these details from fashion that can be used to inform space and form.”

Surface Says: Even in these devastating times, the Jewish Museum’s ode to the late designer rings clear with beauty and grace.

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This year during Miami Art Week, Surface is partnering with the W South Beach and Tuleste Factory to host a global crowd of discerning art and design enthusiasts. Interested in learning more about partnership opportunities and event integrations? Let’s chat.

Pierre Yovanovitch has fine-tuned his craft of imbuing historic, timeworn spaces with contemporary panache. One key element that elevates his interiors is not only sourcing vintage furnishings and museum-worthy artworks but also creating made-to-measure pieces for his design practice—an alchemy that allows him to oscillate between the past and future. This fall, after more than two decades in practice and two years after launching his furniture brand, the French designer will open his first standalone gallery in the heart of Marais. The 2,700-square-foot storefront will feature a succession of rooms functioning as a veritable showcase of his talents, showing off signature Pierre Yovanovitch Mobilier pieces alongside artworks by Tadashi Kawabata and Francesco Clemente.

For the opening, Yovanovitch tapped painter and longtime friend Claire Tabouret to create a limited-edition series celebrating his Asymmetry Chair’s ten-year anniversary. Playing off the themes of childhood, movement, and fragility, the series incorporates the artistry of French craft specialist Atelier Jouffre, who helped Yovanovitch bring his vision—he originally created it using modeling clay—to life. “Having known Claire for a decade, the collection is in many ways a reflection of our friendship and creative synergy,” he says. “The richness of her work and the common theme of childhood bring transience, poetry, color, and movement to this otherwise geometric, almost rock-like form.”

This week, Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York celebrated its sixth annual Benefête at The Box. Gathering more than 200 attendees from the worlds of art and entertainment, the event was a lively tribute to the organization’s mission to provide a platform for lens-based artists by honoring filmmaker Gillian Laub, photographer Nona Faustine, and deejays Stretch and Bobbito. Guests were provided Fujifilm cameras to shoot impromptu moments before enjoying live sets by aerialists above and performances by Common, El Michels Affair, Black Thought, DJ BBARI, and Mark Ronson.

When was it? Oct. 10

Where was it? The Box, New York

Who was there? Isolde Brielmaier, Zoë Buckman, Yancey Richardson, Kimberly Drew, Mickalene Thomas, Kennedy Yanko, Norah Jones, Hank Willis Thomas, Tommy Kha, Maxwell Osborne, Anne Pasternak, Amy Schumer, Jasmine Wahi, and more.

Julie Mehretu’s career has always been about motion, whether describing her frenetic canvases imbued with messages of sociopolitical change to partnerships with American Express and the BMW Art Car. Now the in-demand painter has shattered an auction record for an African-born artist. One of her paintings sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong last week for $9.32 million, far surpassing the previous record set by South African artist Marlene Dumas in 2008. This likely comes as no surprise to connoisseurs of the art market, which has seen demand for African-born artists surge.

Following the success of the Px8 McLaren Edition headphones, Bowers & Wilkins is debuting the limited-edition Zeppelin McLaren Edition wireless speaker—a fusion of top-tier audio and nods to Bruce McLaren’s legacy. The speaker features a sleek Galvanic Grey finish with subtle Papaya Orange accents inspired by McLaren’s design heritage; sixty limited-edition models will feature racing livery-inspired colors, including a vibrant orange finish. Engineered for the streaming age, the Zeppelin houses left and right speaker assemblies around a central subwoofer, delivering room-filling stereo sound. With added multi-room capability, this speaker is both a design statement and a high-performance audio system for the modern home. $899

New & Notable is a cultural catchall that highlights interesting new products and projects from our brilliantly creative members of The List. With new releases, events, and goings-on, the below moments indicate the power they have to move the needle in realms like architecture, design, fashion, and art.

Workshop/APD: The firm’s furniture line was already a Surface favorite, and recently expanded to include the Workshop Collection of sleek, modern, and thoughtfully created staples for any room. See the full edit in person, by appointment, at the brand’s purpose-built showroom in Manhattan.

Wrensilva: A standard-bearer among those with an affinity for records and sleekness of form, Wrensilva’s latest launch, The Standard in Teak console, is aptly named. The Sonos-compatible piece features warm white speakers, storage for up to 135 albums, inputs for cassette decks and cable boxes, as well as a super limited-edition run of only 100.

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After designing for Antwerp-based jewelry label Kim Mee Hye for seven years, Kimy Gringoire took a hiatus and worked as a design consultant before launching her eponymous jewelry brand in 2021. Each piece embodies Gringoire’s unparalleled attention to how it moves with the wearer, while subtle punk references combine narrative design with understated elegance.

Surface Says: Kimy Gringoire combines poetry, gemstones, precious metals, and philosophy to inimitable effect, creating fine jewelry that speaks to a life of travel and romanticism.

One artist is helping clean up Miami by turning trash into collectible treasures.

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Fossilized footprints suggest humans were in the Americas 5,000 years ago.