Dive Brief:
- Gabriela Hearst is leaving Chloé after stepping into the creative director role in 2020, the French fashion house announced Thursday.
- Hearst’s final show for Richemont-owned Chloé will be the spring-summer 2024 collection, which will be presented in September, according to a Chloé press release Hearst shared on her Instagram.
- During Hearst’s tenure, the Chloé brand took steps to boost its sustainability and earned a B-Corp certification, and launched a vertical line with lower impact materials including features that could allow customers to trace the product’s provenance.
Dive Insight:
Hearst, born in Uruguay, remains the co-founder and creative director of her eponymous label.
“Gracias Totales @chloe we still have more proud work to do, una más por favor in September,” Hearst wrote on Instagram.
In the related release, Hearst is credited with playing “an instrumental and key role in driving Chloé’s ongoing transformation into a mission-driven company.”
“Gabriela has brought great energy and dynamic creative vision to her role at Chloé, contributing to a period of significant progress for the business, and writing a powerful new chapter in the story of our Maison,” Riccardo Bellini, president and CEO of Chloé said in the release. “I would like to warmly thank her for bringing so much of herself to this mission- her passion, drive and values, and for her unwavering commitment to supporting the Maison’s meaningful progression in shaping a more responsible future, true to the legacy of our founder.”
Hearst added that it was a privilege to share her creative vision with Chloe, a house she had always loved.
“Very few houses have such a history of strong female leaders who have each made their unique contribution to the Maison, under the inspirational legacy of its founder Gaby Aghion,” she said in the statement. “I represent a standard for quality that has no space for compromise and I believe in honoring the interconnectivity that we all belong to. I feel empowered and excited about the work done at Chloé and moreover, to leave a clear message that a woman can do it all and have fun while at it.”
Chloé achieved its B-Corp certification in 2021, making it the first luxury house to do so.
Some of Chloé’s environmental efforts were spearheaded by Hearst, including the launch of its Nama sneaker, made from lower impact and recycled materials.
Sustainability is also a key component in Hearst’s New York-based eponymous label, launched in 2015. That brand is meant to “make a strong and modern collection without compromising her ethics and key values, taking into consideration where materials come from and who is making them,” according to its website. In 2019, LVMH Luxury Ventures, the investment arm of Richemont rival LVMH, took a minority stake in that brand.
Hearst also has a contemporary label called Candela, launched in 2004.
In a joint interview earlier this year, Hearst and Chloé CEO Riccardo Bellini told WWD that Chloé revenues had increased 60% since Hearst joined.
A successor has not been named. However, in June, Business of Fashion reported that Chemena Kamali, formerly a design director for women’s ready-to-wear at Saint Laurent, was hired to lead a parallel design studio as creative director.
Fashion has seen a recent wave of creative and artistic director exits. Daniel Fletcher left Fiorucci menswear in June, Jeremy Scott left Moschino in March and Charles de Vilmorin departed from Rochas in April, among others.
