Heartfelt
For her first collection as artistic director, Gabriela Hearst has re-energised Chloé’s carefree Parisian chic with fierce pragmatism and an ardent ethical urgency. By Sarah Harris. Styled by Camilla Nickerson. Photographed by Zoë Ghertner.
For her first collection as artistic director, Gabriela Hearst has re-energised Chloé’s carefree Parisian chic with ethical urgency.
Gabriela Hearst is recounting an episode from her childhood that probably sums her up in a single paragraph. “When you grow up on a ranch, you don’t mess around,” warns the Uruguayan designer. “I remember being eight years old, and this huge tarantula shows up on the veranda. But, like, huge.” Her hands indicate the size of a dinner plate. “And I didn’t call my mum or dad for help. You want to know what I did? I grabbed the biggest fork I could find and lobbed it on the tarantula! My father used to tell me I have the courage of a puma, but this is the sort of thing you do when you grow up on a farm. Or if your horse suddenly takes off, if you don’t make the right move you’re dead and you know it. That’s in-built in my system. I have a survival DNA.”
lt’s one of the reasons she is so incredibly unfazed by anything less than certain death. Like her no-fuss approach to helming the Parisian brand Chloé, when she already heads up her own eponymous brand in New York – where she also has a husband and three children. Add to that a life mission to save the planet; because when it comes to her unyielding commitment to sustainability, Hearst is one of fashion’s forerunners. She recently returned from the Greek island of Milos, where she spent every day clearing beaches, picking up Styrofoam and prising plastic bottles from the ground. Footnote: it was supposed to be a family holiday.
Via a Zoom call, Gabi – willowy, 1.8 metres tall, her hair untamed and without a scrap of make-up – is striding across the showroom at Chloé HQ a little to the north of the Champs-Elysées, to grab her favourite piece from her debut collection: the ‘puffcho’, a pufferponcho hybrid that’s as firmly rooted in Chloé’s archives as in Hearst’s own Uruguayan background. “Coming from a culture where my parents wore ponchos, and coming to a house where ponchos are part of the codes, I had to make this. I’ll model it for you,” she says, pulling it on over her head.
This first autumn/winter ’21/’22 collection – put together in only two months, and presented on what would have been the 100th birthday of Chloé founder, Gaby (another one, this time with a ‘y’) Aghion – paid tribute to the house’s legacy of bohemian femininity but with a profound emphasis on sustainability. Hearst used recycled cashmere and bought deadstock fabrics from mills for a series of floor-skimming sweater dresses, and masterfully took on the classic Chloé flou with an array of fluttery pleated slips. She also collaborated with Sheltersuit Foundation, a Dutch non-profit organisation that provides emergency shelter to the homeless, supplying all-weather coats that morph into sleeping bags. They’re made by Syrian refugees from repurposed fabrics patchworked together. “lt’s the most altruistic way of looking at design with purpose,” Hearst explains. “lt’s a 360-degree thought process.”
It isn’t hyperbolic to suggest that Hearst was destined for this job. Her first luxury handbag was Chloé’s Edith (this season, she bought 50 of them on eBay and revived them using leftover fabric as one-off items that will be sold at auction; Edith bags made to order will be customised in the same way).
“Chloé was always a dream of mine; I have a deep love for this house,” she says. Self-assured and straighttalking, she shoots from the hip. During initial conversations with Chloé bosses, she told them, “I’m the one,” in no uncertain terms. “I said: ‘You know l’m the only designer for this job, I think you need to stop looking. Come on! My name is Gabi! lt’s meant to be! Now, let’s waste no time.”
Sustainability credentials – and humour – aside, it’s easy to see the appeal of Hearst for Chloé. Her own brand has proved her skill for tailoring, her ability to design a hit bag, and her celebrity following, from Laura Dern to Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and most recently Jill Biden, who wore bespoke Gabriela Hearst to Joe Biden’s inauguration party, and again, to his first presidential address to Congress.
She started by compiling a 92-page presentation on the Chloé woman, conducting her own market research on a group of friends whom she considered classic Chloé customers. She also developed a proposal for a sustainability program, and was delighted and surprised to discover that much of it was already in place. “I thought l’d have more of an uphill battle, but they just needed a creative who had that frame of mind, someone who can design with less impact, and that’s what I do.”
Granted, compared with Gabriela Hearst, Chloé operates on a different, much larger scale. Most obviously, that means it produces more, but what Hearst believes she can do is create the product in a better way. For example, linen linings will replace cotton, which is a fabric she tries to stay away from because of the pesticides involved, and she cannot wholeheartedly endorse even organic cotton because of the vast amount of water required for its cultivation.
“There is nothing more important to talk about or to do right now,” she insists, adding that her debut collection for Chloé is “four times more sustainable” compared with last year’s output. “The truth is, we don’t have enough time. The way we take new natural resources from this planet is just impossible. We have to change; we don’t live in an endless cornucopia of natural materials. ln order to preserve, we have to take less.”
In addition to immediately changing Chloé’s clothes hangers and packaging, Hearst has already implemented improvements such as reducing the 12 types of gold hardware on handbags to only one. (It may sound insignificant, but the galvanisation process is highly polluting, and having only one gold means that everything can be treated at once.) She is also turning her attention to the 91 Chloé stores, which will have less of an overhaul and more of a sensitive rethink. “Everything that consumes energy, like digital screens, we are pulling them out as we speak. I hate screens – who wants a huge screen in a store? For what reason? Bombarding your eyes, stressing you out. That isn’t calming.”
“The truth is, we don’t have enough time. The way we take new natural resources from this planet is just impossible. We have to change …”
On arrival, in December last year, Hearst went on a deep dive into the house. She took the broderie anglaise from Karl Lagerfeld’s tenure, and the scallop detail from Gaby Aghion’s early collections, and she explored new possibilities with them – on leather, in knitwear. She spent time with Gaby’s granddaughter Mikhaela, and listened to stories about Chloé’s founder, who regularly used leftover fabrics to make scarves. “I really regret not meeting her,” she says. Aghion died in 2014, aged 93. “She was such a trailblazer … how she lived her life, there was no opulence, she was very meticulous and considered. That way of living feels very modern to me.”
But you can’t not ask the question: with two grown-up step-children, as well as 13-yearold twin girls, Mia and Olivia, and a six-year-old son, Jack, how easy was it to get this job over the line with her husband, Austin Hearst, the film producer, philanthropist and scion of the publishing house? “Honestly, in the beginning, no, he didn’t want me to do it. He already knows how intense I am, and also he’s the main investor at Gabriela Hearst. So, I’m his wife and I’m his investment, and he’s a businessman! But then he started to figure it out and he saw how much I wanted it and how capable I am of it, and he said: ‘Okay, let’s do this.’ He has to take a lot of the load on,” she acknowledges. “I spoke about it with my daughters, and the whole family agreed. Mikhaela actually said something super sweet: after the Gabriela Hearst show in New York, she said: ‘That was a beautiful show, you know, you can only do that if you are a great family; if you have the love and support of your family. They are the veins of your functioning spirit.’ It’s really stayed with me.”
Now in her 40s, Gabriela Hearst grew up strictly off-grid on her family’s 17,000 acre ranch in Uruguay, two-and-a-half hours from the closest city. Her formative years were spent herding cattle and riding horses, which she learned long before riding a bike. Without television, her imagination – and sketch pad – was her escapism. Sustainability was ingrained in her from birth: living on a ranch, things have to be made well because they have to last. As she puts it: “You can’t simply go shopping to replace something.” It’s an ethos she has carried through to clothes. She isn’t interested in trends; her designs are based on principles of longevity, integrity of material and craftsmanship.
Her parents were very measured. Her mother – a fifth-generation cattlewoman who competed in rodeo at age 18 – ordered fabrics from Europe and had everything made by a seamstress. “It was that level of quality of clothing but never excess; my mother didn’t have a big closet, but what she had was beautiful,” says Hearst. Dressing up was reserved for wins at the livestock fairs. “We’d spend all day in the earth, dirty, and so for when you get clean, you really clean up – a gaucho in full regalia is something quite beautiful to see.”
There is a refreshing levelheadedness to Gabi that far outweighs the airs and graces that wealth can bring. She met Austin in Argentina in 2004; they were friends, then business partners, then husband and wife. She tells a story of when she launched her Gabriela Hearst line. She was six months pregnant and constantly running up and down the stairs during a nine-hour presentation. “My mother visited me; she took me aside and she said: ‘Honey, I thought when you married a rich man the idea is not to work so much?’ But you know what she told me as a kid? She said: ‘You need to be financially independent and emotionally independent of any man.’ So, this work ethic I have, it’s her fault!”
She’s still figuring out how best to divide her time. Finding it impossible to compartmentalise, she works on both brands every day – “It’s like, which one of your children do you love more? Whoever needs you more, you’re there” – regardless of where she is. She currently alternates between two weeks in New York and two weeks in Paris (she picks airlines with the lowest impact, and offsets the remaining emissions with Gold Standard certified projects), where she is happily holed up in Le Bristol until she finds a home. After months of curfew, she’s beginning to enjoy life there. “Lunch – now this is what I love about Paris: they stop for lunch. Lunch is a thing. In America, lunch is for losers, but in France, lunch is for winners. I love that. That’s a joy of life.”
She isn’t interested in trends; her designs are based on principles of longevity, integrity of material and craftsmanship