By Anders Christian Madsen
Under the creative vision of Gabriela Hearst, Chloé is becoming fashion's embodiment of the age of awareness. Presenting her first resort collection for the brand on a video call from Paris, it was motivation over inspiration: "We're here on a mission," she said, listing the impressive measures the house is taking to make its collections sustainable. If you came for the romantic mood boards and the classic tales of trips to the archive, this wasn't it. "I haven't gone to the archive," Hearst said. "I feel like I've loved Chloé for so long and I have this idea of what it looks like. It's not that I don't respect what's been done in its history, but I want the representation of what Chloé means to me to come out first."
Instead, the collection was an accelerated exercise in what we might discover to be our post-pandemic fashion mindset: What you wear is only as good as its social and environmental footprint. "We can't deny what we went through on a global scale. Things are going to be different," she said, referring to a cataclysmic year that shifted our understanding of environmental impact and made companies like Chloé—already on a sustainable path before her arrival—look to eco-conscious figureheads like Hearst. "Each collection is an opportunity to do it better," she said. "I already did the least sustainable thing you can do, which is to have three kids."
In spirit, her proposal was geared toward those kids: the next-generation mentality Hearst says can't come quickly enough. "We need to move out of the way and let them take over. They're wired in a different way. They have a different perception." In design, the collection's Chloé-revering bohemian pragmatism reached out to generations somewhat older. Puritan-ish dresses were constructed in circular deadstock denim—with no metal, laser treatment instead of water, and recycled wood buttons—scalloped leather, and deadstock broderie anglaise. Linen trench coats trimmed with embroidered white edges demonstrated how Hearst might see a classic wardrobe staple through the instinctive Chloé lens she talks about.
Blanket coats and fringed hand-spun dresses riffed on the hippie-esque references we historically relate to an eco-friendly wardrobe—not one for a cliché, Hearst likened them to techno dance parties. "Rave against the machine," she punned, showing off a matching multi-color debut Chloé sneaker defined by its great, big stitches, every component created from recycled material. "I'm really attracted to product that feels handmade. I want to feel like a human worked on it." She cited the Pre-Raphaelites and Arts and Crafts movement as loose sources of inspiration, comparing their artistic responses to the Industrial Revolution to what we're experiencing today. As Hearst delves deeper into the sustainable achievements of her Chloé residency, she will no doubt find more space for her own artistic response to that changed world.
Detail Look 1
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