Gabriela Hearst Takes Chloé to Bugatti Speed in Redefining Purpose for Luxury Brands

The goddesses were smiling on Gabriela Hearst with her Chloé spring 2022 show, with girls spreading love while walking along the Quai de la Tournelle in brilliant sunshine. What more could an increasingly influential Gabriela Hearst ask for to close out the performance? How about a packed riverboat sailing past her gorgeous spectacle with perhaps an American or two shouting “Vive la France!”

The designer was visibly ecstatic, according to press reports. “As cheesy as it sounds, this collection is about love,” she said in a preview. “It’s really about the love of so many things: the love of craft, the love of friendship, the love of fellow humans. I literally have to memorize the many different NGOs, because I am working with so many this season.”

Flipflops ruled the Chloé runway. Building on her eco-friendly Nama trainers launched earlier in the year, smile-generating, multicolored, deep-soled Chloé flip-flops brought joy and irrepressible smiles to the new collection. All those multi-color layers were once flip-flops in Africa.

“They’re from Ocean Sole, which I’ve been wanting to work with for a long time!” Hearst declared with glee. “It’s a Kenyan nonprofit that collects flip-flops from the ocean.” The group even has flip-flop art.

Ocean Sole flip-flop Art from Kenya.

Hearst brought serious business acumen to her spring 2022 Chloé show, reducing the number of looks to 31 from the brand’s typical 50 or more. Equally exciting for any brand, but in particular a luxury brand, Chloé’s Hearst is writing the playbook on sourcing, traceability in a product’s production cycle, environmental and social responsibility and — most exciting — a tight embrace of of women’s organizations and communities worldwide. Hearst worked with seven NGOs this season.

As Sarah Mower noted for Vogue: Gabriela Hearst is ostensibly redefining the entire purpose of a luxury brand’s existence. A few years ago, Gucci declared that it would carry this lamp of benevolent light forward into the future, and the brand has made great progress. But in a relay race with multiple runners handing off the baton to the next team mate, Gabriela Hearst is setting the luxury brand bar so high that her colleagues — and competitors — will have to pole vault into the future just to keep up with her.

Even Bernard Arnault’s LVMH teams including Stella McCartney, who shows her spring collection on Monday, have to be wondering what Gabriela Hearst eats for breakfast.

Chloé Luxury, the most exclusive level of the brand, has become Chloé Craft—a group of products with a spiral logo. In the words of the designer “only a human hand can make those pieces.”

The spring collection is peppered with the work of human hands — almost exclusively women’s — from the petal-pattern crocheted dresses and tops to streamers galore. The intricately knotted streamer-harnesses are made from deadstock Chloé materials, using techniques created by Akanjo, a social enterprise organization in Madagascar.

Chunks seashell jewelry and baskets carry the name of the person who wove them.

Fabrics that appear to be denim are really made of linen, a much less demanding on the environment earth fiber than cotton. Oversized women’s baskets came from Mifuko, also in Kenya. Mifuko describes themselves as “radically sustainable since 2009 as a community of strong, independent women.”

Speaking about the disarming simplicity of some of the white looks, Hearst explained that if you go up close, you see truly gorgeous silks and talismans. The charms are from dead-stock jewelry in old Parisian fashion houses. Upcycled fabrics from previous seasons are now shredded and macraméd into new garments.

Hearst says that the 58 percent of the spring collection is made from lower-impact materials, compared to 40 percent of the winter collection. For those who are taking notes, Gabriella Hearst is also sourcing fibers and other materials from farms committed to regenerative soil health. Arizona Muse will be ecstatic.

The New York Times shares a conversation with Gabriella Heart, first aired on Instagram Live.

Speaking of her current, very demanding life: Hearst has irrepressible confidence:

Well, I take genuine joy and satisfaction from the design process and am supported by amazing teams. Obviously this experience can be hard at times. It takes a physical toll and a lot of sacrifice to make sure you find some kind of balance, especially when it comes to family. But also, I wanted this. Badly. I am grateful for the opportunity. So I can’t complain for even one second because I wanted these things. It’s a dream to be doing what I’m doing.