Gabriela Hearst Puts On A Crystal-Infused Show In Brooklyn
With drum beats and recycled cashmere.
Gabriela Hearst introduced her collection through the lens of gender freedom, quoting from Professor Emanuele Lugli, who teaches art history at Stanford University. "Fashion is thus rediscovered as a privileged field of inquiry precisely because often it is the very practice that reiterates sexual and gender binaries," he says, "But once it is freed from such obligations, fashion emerges as capable of a new creative mission that has the power to disrupt self-limiting lives and grant access to a new, wholesome one.”
Freedom is a good word for the collection that walked in Brooklyn yesterday. Presented to live and effusive drumming on a set created by artist Kristy McCarthy aka “D.Gale” (an alum of Groundswell, a social justice organization that uses art to promote youth development), it felt like the work of a designer having fun with luxury fashion. Hearst loves earth, art, and other creators, and you could sense that in the clothes.
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The full show looked almost like an art piece in itself, with color-blocks of yellows, peaches, and reds intertwined with leather trenches, a stellar cape moment, very good coats, cool suiting that leverages recycled cashmere, crochet, and fringe. Hearst utilized a print from a painting created by Ana Martínez Orizondo, visual artist and writer, called "Winter Horse," one work in a series that explores trees and human relationships to them. That crochet doesn't just look pretty, it's also probably pretty powerful—as crystals like malachite, turquoise, lapis, and onyx are woven within it.
Hearst doesn't just tell a seasonal story with clothes—the road to get there is environmentally sustainable and intensely aware. Those vibrant colors are created out of ground recycled wood and botanical dyes made out of things like citrine and watermelon. This is some next-level stuff. But it's not purely intellectual. These are clothes women want to wear. Those boots are made for stomping city streets, and who doesn't want to pre-order that double-breasted suit Amber Valletta closed the show in?
This article originally appeared in Harper's BAZAAR US