UK Edition
Gabriela Hearst on carbon-neutral fashion shows and building a brand in the eco age
The fashion and art worlds are speckled with kooky-looking types who turn out to be disappointingly conventional once you scratch the veneer.
Gabriela Hearst is the opposite. Superficially she’s a tall, willowy blonde in expensive-looking classics. Slightly bed-heady, but that intrinsically neat pixie crop means she never looks chaotic. She won’t scare the horses on the Upper East Side where she drops her three children off at school. There’s nothing about her that would flummox the natives in Chelsea, where her design studio is, either.
But her husband, John Hearst, scion of the publishing dynasty that owns, inter alia, Harper’s Bazaar and Cosmopolitan, knows better. He’s the one who advised her not to attempt to be normal. ‘I tried so hard. But he said, “you’re eccentric. Go with the flow.”’
Hearst has managed to parlay that maverick streak into a highly regarded, successful luxury fashion label. Think The Row, the uber luxurious, in-demand line started by the Olsen twins in 2006 that now turns over $100 million plus a year – but more contoured. Where The Row is predicated on oversized, enveloping kaftans and coats, Gabriela Hearst crafts slim-line androgynous tailoring and fit and flare dresses. Like The Row, it’s hugely expensive, and influential.
These are classics, rooted in the 1970s, which were formative years for Hearst, 45. Born in Montevideo (a satisfyingly exotic sounding place for a disruptor to be born), she grew up on a ranch in Uruguay with parents who sound even more unconventional than she is. Her mother, Ika, was a rodeo star, a martial arts practitioner and also a Zen Buddhist, way before that was anything but weird in the West. ‘One of my earliest memories was her being thrown off her horse, holding onto her teeth.’ Fearless, but sensible, then. And says Hearst, ‘fantastically stylish, with a passion for impeccable equestrian-inspired tailoring worn with beautiful, hippy-style midi pieces.’
Hearst has no interest in the dramatic seasonal volte-faces, but in refining her fabrics and the way she produces clothes. She’s passionate about sustainability and ethics, all the more so since visiting Africa in 2017 with Save the Children and seeing firsthand the impact of drought caused by unsustainable farming. ‘That’s when you’re really hit by the out-of-control nature of our over consumption. It’s not making us happy, it’s numbing us.’
She works with 600 women across Uruguay who make by hand as well as using recycled cashmere – she estimates as much as 25 per cent of her output is from deadstock, i.e. fabrics and yarns that would previously have tossed in landfill. That’s radical for a luxury label. But can it be scaled up? The uptake on her Demi bag – the Duchess of Sussex is one of many high-profile fans, and has also placed private orders for Hearst’s clothes – piqued the interest of bigger conglomerates. She was even talked up as a possible successor to Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel. But she’s probably happiest in her own house.
Gabriela Hearst AW19
But won’t building a brand at least as big as The Row contradict her stance on consumerism? ‘Not if you do it very slowly,’ she says in her Spanish-inflected bullet delivery. ‘It’s about finding high-quality fabrics that don’t cause environmental damage - hunting, gathering, being thoughtful and organised. It’s no good having ethically sourced product if your delivery arrives late and you end up having to fly it across the world instead of transporting it by ship.’
We digress into talk of her best reads this year - The Overstory by Richard Powers ‘you’ll never see trees in the same way,’ and Edith Hamilton’s Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, and the week she recently spent on a Hoffman course in Southern England - it’s an intense therapy programme and not the usual topic for a fashion interview. ‘I try to meditate,’ she says, although not with Headspace, the meditation app her husband invested in. ‘I don’t need more tech in my life,’ she says.
Earlier this week, she hosted the industry’s first carbon-neutral show during New York Fashion Week, working with EcoAct to minimise carbon footprint, and then donating the equivalent ‘cost’ to the Hifadhi-Livelihoods Project in Kenya, which provides cookstoves to reduce wood consumption by 60 per cent in areas where access to energy is limited.
But she’s spent most of the summer in London, where her first store outside New York opens this week, designed by Sir Norman Foster no less.
Using reclaimed wood, it has, she says, taken her store philosophy to the next level. ‘I love the idea of offering a Claridges-level of service in a clothes shop – and absolutely not being intimidating.’ Naturally, there was a party last night to launch it, which she promised would be the full Latin deal. ‘If I don’t land in jail on Saturday morning, I can’t count the party a total success.’
Gabriela Hearst, 50 Brook Street, London W1.