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8 Jun

FIT to Honor Gabriela Hearst With the Couture Council

The Fashion Institute of Technology will honor Gabriela Hearst, creative director of her namesake fashion brand and French luxury fashion house Chloé, with the Couture Council Award for Artistry of Fashion.

The annual luncheon will happen Sept. 6 on the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center in Latest York. The event marks the beginning of Latest York Fashion Week and advantages the Museum at FIT, the one museum in Latest York dedicated solely to the art of fashion.

As WWD reported on Monday, Hearst is alleged to be stepping down from her role at Chloé after showing her spring 2024 collection during Paris Fashion Week. The parting is known to be amicable, with Hearst wishing to concentrate on her fast-growing signature brand and other projects.

This yr’s luncheon co-chairs are Lara Meiland-Shaw, board chair, Couture Council, and Melissa Mafrige Mithoff, vice chair, Couture Council, and Nordstrom is once more the presenting sponsor.

Past recipients of the Couture Council Award have been Maria Grazia Chiuri of Dior, Wes Gordon, Christian Louboutin, Narciso Rodriguez, Thom Browne, Albert Kriemler of Akris, Manolo Blahnik, Carolina Herrera, Michael Kors, Oscar de la Renta, Valentino, Karl Lagerfeld, Dries Van Noten, Isabel Toledo, Alber Elbaz and Ralph Rucci.

Hearst, a Uruguayan-born designer who is predicated in Latest York, is well-known for her commitment to the environment and her concentrate on sustainability. Inspired by her time growing up on her family’s ranch in Uruguay, she launched her eponymous brand in 2015 as a technique to create fashion with a slower pace and process. Her runway shows have featured deadstock fabrics and have eliminated plastic use, and her spring 2020 collection marked the primary carbon-neutral runway show.

Hearst, who designs ready-to-wear, wonderful merino wool and cashmere knitwear, wonderful jewelry and purses, launched a menswear collection in 2019. The designer has stores in Latest York, London and Le Bristol in Paris, and plans to open one other store in September on the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles.

Gabriela Hearst RTW Fall 2023

Rodin Banica/WWD

Along with her own namesake business, Hearst was named creative director at Chloé in December 2020, and since her arrival has built the brand right into a purpose-driven and socially engaged company, showing solid revenue gains. During her tenure, she has overhauled all of the fabrics used for Chloé’s ready-to-wear, replacing cashmere with recycled cashmere and recent denim with circular denim, product of 87 percent recycled cotton and 13 percent hemp, or 80 percent recycled cotton and 20 percent linen. Cotton linings in handbags have regularly been replaced with lower-impact linen. In October 2021, Chloé became the primary European luxury maison to receive B Corp status.

In her last hurrah for Chloé, Hearst has lined up a collaboration between Chloé and actress Angelina Jolie, who recently revealed her intention to launch a fashion house.

In 2019, LVMH Luxury Ventures, the fund launched by French luxury giant LVMH to support emerging brands, invested in Hearst’s business, allowing the brand to expand its presence around the globe.

Hearst has been recognized with quite a few honors, including the 2016-17 International Woolmark Prize for Womenswear, and the American Womenswear Designer of the 12 months prize on the CFDA Fashion Awards in 2020. She was chosen as one among the five honorees within the Environment category among the many 15 Leaders of Change on the British Fashion Council’s Fashion Awards, and was also named as one among the Financial Times’ 25 most influential women of 2021.

In January 2021, Hearst designed an ivory dress, embroidered with each of the 50 state’s flowers, worn by First Lady Jill Biden for the 2021 presidential inauguration. It’s now a part of the Smithsonian’s First Ladies Collection.

“It’s such an honor for the team and I to receive the 2023 Couture Council Award for Artistry of Fashion from probably the most prestigious design institutions,” Hearst said. “We take this recognition with the humbleness of dedicating ourselves more to the work. Designing with consciousness of others and our surroundings not only enriches us with purpose but additionally focuses our creativity,” she said.

Joyce F. Brown, president of FIT, said, “Gabriela Hearst has positioned herself as an eco-conscious designer who believes creating aspirational sustainable fashion is feasible, and she or he has achieved this with each collection. Her vision — that a fashion brand might be successful while meeting social and environmental performance standards has been validated by the expansion of Chloé under her creative leadership. The scholars at FIT are aspiring designers with a sustainability mindset and she or he is an inspiration to them. It’s our honor to acknowledge her sustainability work and contribution to the world of fashion.”

Valerie Steele, director on the Museum at FIT, added, “Born in Uruguay, where she grew up on her parents’ ranch, Gabriela Hearst is today one among fashion’s most visionary creators. Her luxurious, beautiful and sustainable fashions are already iconic.”

The Museum at FIT’s latest exhibition, “¡Moda Hoy! Latin American and Latinx Fashion Design Today,” which opened May 31, examines the work of Latin American and Latine fashion designers from the primary 20 years of the twenty first century. It features designs by Hearst and will probably be on view through Nov. 12.

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