Heartbreak High's Chloé Hayden: ‘I left the op-shop bawling my eyes out'

The Guardian

21-06-2025

In a bunker in Sydney's north-west, the Heartbreak High actor Chloé Hayden poses on a white circular plinth. Pink Pony Club by Chappell Roan – one of Hayden's favourite artists – is playing on repeat, and the revolving floor beneath her is surrounded by objects: an old wooden rocking horse, a tattered teddy and a pair of embroidered suede Miu Miu boots.
Hayden is filming a video for a new exhibition at the Powerhouse museum, one she has co-curated about textural objects. Every object in the exhibition has been selected by the 27-year-old from the Powerhouse's vast collection.
'All of the objects here represent me in some form – the cows are my favourite,' she says, referring to ornate miniature cattle dating back to the 1870s, made from papier-mache, beeswax and cow hair. 'It's very common for autistic people to build connections with inanimate objects, and these cows are very similar to the toy animals I have at home.'
The fragile figurines will be on display in a new exhibition series titled Powerhouse Materials. Hayden is the inaugural guest curator for the series, which showcases a fraction of the items from the 500,000-plus objects in the museum's collection. Hayden was given the theme 'textiles'; later in the year, children's author Andy Griffiths will curate an iteration with the theme 'paper'.
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Hayden spent a month working with the museum to whittle down a long list of objects to 17 items, including a child's Annie Oakley costume from the 1950s and a silk chiffon Barrier Reef dress and accompanying seaweed cape by the fashion designer Linda Jackson. It's Hayden's first time working with an institution on a project of this scale.
'Chloé is an activist and advocate for many things, including her personal style and sensibility,' says Clare Holland, director of program at the Powerhouse. 'Her unique way of engaging with the world has shaped the materials she has chosen.'
Hayden, who is nominated for a silver Logie this year for best supporting actress as Heartbreak High's Quinni, frequently shares TikTok videos of her colourful and textural outfits, as well as her experiences with autism, ADHD and chronic illness.
Quinni has been a 'huge part of my identity', says Hayden, 'but it's one facet'. 'I feel like I wear many faces. The one I know – that my family, husband and friends know – isn't the face the public knows. This is Chloé,' she says, gesturing to her clothing and the items around her.
Since finishing filming the third and final season of Heartbreak High (out later this year), Chloé is reconnecting with her first love, horses, on her farm in regional Victoria. Hayden says horse riding was her 'whole identity' before the Netflix series. 'Now no one even knows that about me.'
One of the Powerhouse collection items she has chosen to represent her country lifestyle is a men's Driza-Bone jacket, gifted to the museum in 1994. 'My first Driza-Bone was one my mum wore when she was a little girl … I wear one every winter when I ride my horse.'
She competes in an equestrian sport called Extreme Cowboys. 'The best way I can describe it is like an agility course for dogs – but you're on a 500-kilo animal. You have to do the obstacles as fast as you can, as accurately as you can,' she says.
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Her mother, Sarah Hayden, who wrote Parenting Different about raising neurodiverse children, runs an equine therapy clinic. In the book, her daughter writes that 'riding with a group of 'cowboys', who … only judged me on how I rode and loved my horse, gave me a time in my week to stop masking and just be Chloé'.
Embracing her special interests – animals, horse riding, fashion – come through in the items she has selected, such as a skin-tight green Jordan Gogos outfit made of fabric scraps.
'I think fashion should be fun,' she says. 'We play dress-ups as kids and we forget how to play dress-ups when we grow up.' Today she's wearing an embellished halterneck and miniskirt by Camilla, created in collaboration with Wicked the Musical.
Another connecting thread is toys and childhood nostalgia. For the exhibition, Hayden chose a Japanese teddy from 1927, a Mickey Mouse soft toy and a silk-printed teddy bear backpack designed by Akira Isogawa. She says she gets emotionally attached to toy animals.
At home, Hayden has accumulated 140 model horses by Breyer and Schleich – a collection only outdone by her teddy bears. 'I have 150 of them,' she says. 'When I was 18 I went to an op-shop and found this mangled teddy bear deer. He was missing an eye and his ear was off, but I had to have him.
'I left the op-shop bawling my eyes out. My mum, knowing what I was like, drove an hour back to the op-shop just so I could pay the lady 50 cents and take this deer home.'
She still has the op-shop deer. 'Once they come home with me they never leave, that's why I have 150.'
Overall, the Powerhouse exhibition is a way for Hayden's fans to see all her passions together, in material form and not just in a 30-second reel. 'I think there are definitely things that people who don't know me intimately would go, 'That's an interesting choice' but people that know me would go, 'This is the most Chloé exhibit you could ever think of.''
Powerhouse Materials: Textiles is at Powerhouse Castle Hill from 28 June to 9 November