Fashion refugee finds peace as event planner

Moshe Aelyon says he has no interest in being the next Martha Stewart, the very public face of a lifestyle empire, although his Mosaic Event Planning and Catering is building quite a reputation in Stewart's old hometown of Westport.

Aelyon leveraged his penchant for creativity and an innate

"I spend a lot of time trying to understand the mission of the event, because that is going to dictate my next move," Aelyon said of how he likes to soak up a company's image by acting as a fly on the wall at its meetings.

Understanding client's needs is part of the commitment Aelyon shows even in the briefest encounters. He refuses to wear any electronic devices or to be wired with ultra communications paraphernalia because he wants his clients to have his undivided attention when he is meeting with them or producing an event.

Perhaps the best testament to his work is the fact that he has built the business completely through word-of-mouth referrals by clients, including large corporations such as Miramax, General Electric and Morgan Stanley, and nonprofit organizations such as Save the Children and Near and Far Aid Association.

"We never know who is where. I have to be on constantly and give my 150 percent at each event since a lot of the Manhattan and Fairfield County corporate heads often reside in this area," said Aelyon.

Most recently, Aelyon orchestrated a South Beach theme for the second annual "Boogie for Breast Cancer" extravaganza that took place on April 27 at Club Clarke in Norwalk. The event drew 500 attendees and raised more than $300,000 for breast cancer research.

For corporate work, Mosaic charges a daily consultant fee for his participation in the conception, management and coordination, and then execution of the event. Typically, he said, it works out to anywhere from 15 percent to 27 percent of the client's gross expenditures.

Fashion fallout

Aelyon, 38, was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey. He was educated at a French school and came to the United States when he was 18 to study fashion design and marketing at the University of California. He has lived and traveled extensively in France and throughout Europe and Asia.

Having established himself in the fashion world as a designer/manufacturer/importer with his own line of private label women's accessories, Aelyon said he got out five years ago because the realities of the fashion industry changed.

"I was traveling a lot and the numbers were getting so large, we became sort of a private label company. I completely lost the creative energy for it. Spiritually, I made the decision that that is not how I wanted to live my life," he said.

Aelyon looked into catering, but a friend who makes his living as a management consultant advised him that the numbers for a small catering company did not make sense in Westport retail.

"My friend said, 'You're an idea person. You are going to talk to people about entertaining, so you're basically going to charge them as a consultant,"' he said.

Aelyon quickly carved out his niche after organizing a few events for Fortune 500-type companies. Corporate work accounted for 70 percent of his business in his first three years. As word spread, social and nonprofit events came into play.

Looking a head

The most satisfying part of the job, he said, is organizing a large event. He considers the service staff and vendors on a job like an Army, and relishes the fact that he is the commander.

In the coming months, Mosaic will launch a production division that Aelyon hopes will "provide the company with the tools it needs to take it to the next level."

The party guru is writing a book as well.

"For people like me, to create is like oxygen. If we stop producing, evolving and expressing, we suffocate and eventually die," he said.