Photo: Imaxtree
While many of her peers in Paris and elsewhere make a lot of noise about how the work they're doing is in some way progressive, few designers in the industry are walking the walk as clearly as Gabriela Hearst, both with her namesake label and with her work at Chloé.
Ever since taking over the French fashion house in late 2020, Hearst has led a quiet revolution, launching with a collection that was reportedly "four times more sustainable" than what came before and letting her work speak for itself from there. Now, she's introducing yet another new concept which will allow her to lead from a sustainable mindset: Moving forward, Chloé will focus "on a specific climate solution in tandem with an overarching aesthetic reference each season," according to show notes. For Fall 2022, the focal point is "rewilding" — "a progressive approach to conservation that centers on allowing nature to take care of itself."
"By enabling natural processes to repair damaged ecosystems and restore degraded landscapes, wildlife's natural rhythms can ultimately create more biodiverse habitats," the notes read.
For this collection, Hearst spoke with Isabella Tree, author of Wilding — the Return of Nature to a British Farm, about how she deals with climate anxiety; her response was "by living in the solution." From there, the designer juxtaposed landscapes featuring "climate catastrophes" with those featuring "climate successes" in a series of matching skirt and sweater knit sets feature droughts, fires and melting glaciers. Those are the statement-making pieces, but the majority of the autumnal line is made up of wearable (and re-wearable) clothing, from perfectly-cut suiting to ruffled leather coats and pinafores.
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The entire collection feels like it would seamlessly fit into ideas Hearst has already presented in previous seasons. There's no wild see-sawing from trend-to-trend here.
Hearst doesn't let her commitment to social and environmental impact stop at the clothes — it continues in how they are represented on the runway. First and perhaps most importantly, she keeps the collection tight. (It's hard to believe a brand is pushing for sustainability when it cranks out collections clocking in over 50 looks multiple times a year. That's just entirely too much stuff.) Second, she taps a wide range of models to wear her designs, whether in size or in age. And finally, the "Climate Success" range is produced "in aid of the Indigenous Women Fellowship program launched by Conservation International, which supports Indigenous women's autonomy and leadership in securing the conservation of their territories and forests across the Amazon."
This partnership with Conservation International's Indigenous Women Fellowship program is one of three Chloé will undertake for its Fall 2022 ready-to-wear collection; the other two are with Akanjo (with which the brand has already aligned with) and with Nest, which works with the Gee's Bend quilters. Indeed, the Chloé show notes clock in at seven PDF pages, most of which are dedicated to explaining the different ways the house is attempting to align its output with Hearst's ideals, from the sustainability of the runway production itself to the materials used in the collection.
See the complete Chloé Fall 2022 collection in the gallery below:
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