15 MINS with GABRIELA HEARST

The designer, free thinker and fashion sustainability pioneer Gabriela Hearst has always carved her own path. We wanted to learn more about the unusual connection between running her family’s ranch in Uruguay and her namesake clothing label that prioritises sustainability, her unique determination to follow her own instincts even if it means swimming against the tide, and what role she thinks our external environment plays in our internal one, and so much more.

How did you begin carving out what you felt to be your key values and making sure those were being honoured in your professional and personal life?

When we started Gabriela Hearst nearly 10 years ago - actually it's going to be 10 years this month since we launched - it was the same values that we carry strongly now, which are long term view and sustainability. The world is moving much more rapidly, but it was moving quite fast at that time, and I already saw the damages that the overconsumption of fashion was doing. No one needed another fashion house, no one needed another fashion line. If we were going to do something it had to be better than what was out there, so the standards were high when it came to craftsmanship and quality values. The idea that we are not alone, that we are here to make products with people, for people, and if we could help others along the way even better.

What do you believe is the link between what’s happening externally in the world to what’s happening to us internally?

We are all interconnected, everything in this planet and the human species as well, and I think there's a disconnect with this connection. We share one brain, the neocortex, and we tend to believe in these modern societies we are living in that whatever was happening - let's say in the Horn of Africa - wouldn't be affecting us, but it actually does at a subconscious level. So, I think that the disconnect that is happening is a disconnection that we have with nature and with the values that have been mudded in the 20th century with the industrial revolution.

There feels like a freedom in your mind that allows you to reimagine and find solutions in a way other people have not, is that something you’ve always had or built up over time?

I think I’ve always had it, the only difference is that I didn't realize that I had a perspective, a specific point. I thought everyone thought like me, for the boredom of many people. I think a lot of it has to do with how I grew up in a ranch and how my neuro pathways were formed, because even today the way I work, the way my team works, I can always trace down to the values I learned there.

What do you believe holds more people back from following their true path?

I think the programming that some people may have for their families, the expectations, the expectations of society, of comparing or fitting in, I think that there's so much of those values that don’t serve us. But I've been very lucky that my mom, while traditionally working in a ranch, was very progressive in her viewpoint so I was able to make my own choices when it came to what I wanted to do with my life.

You’ve spoken about the need for more women in leadership roles, what is something you feel is distinct to their leadership approach (that others who aren’t women and other women - if it's not intrinsically in their wheelhouse can incorporate)?

It's not just what I feel, it's data and the collection of research, it's huge when it comes to the capacity of women. We know that societies that empower women do much better, countries do much better economically (those countries that empower women), we know through nonprofits like Save the Children or even Manos del Uruguay that when we empower women, we empower communities. We have the capacity to lift others with us. This is something that we are very good at, being executives. Given the recent research that I've been studying, Marija Gimbutas, the archeologist, in her take of the mother goddess society - we’re talking about neolithic times - it was a matrilineal society in what she calls old Europe, because women were controlling the agriculture and doing the weaving and the pottery. We’ve always had these positions of leadership, and it changed during the history of the evolution of society and the dominion of horses, but women in leadership positions did exist in our antiquity and in our history and they’ve done incredible. Even if you look at the monarchs that we’ve had that have been female and the empowerment and the leadership of those, it’s very quantifiable, measured and conducted, that women have the ability to succeed and move societies forward.

Ten years on from the beginning of your company, what is something unexpected you learned about yourself?

I've been working so much so I haven't had time really to contemplate in the sense of what I realize about myself. I do realize that my values don't move even if they are not on trend. What I believe is what I believe, and I haven't changed it because they are in my core, and they are not imposed. It is what I think is the correct path for us to move forward.

As someone who is always learning and expanding, what is something new you gleaned recently that stayed with you?

I think of all the Marija Gimbutas' research because I actually thought that it was really with the Roman Empire that we got it wrong, but it took me way back to this neolithic period where we see a matrilineal society that lived for thousands of years in peace with no weapons and no forts. This idea that we were not a killing ape I’m very attached to it, because I do believe in humans and I do believe in humanity, even if the current state of affairs shows otherwise.

If you could sum up the experience of reading WANT in one word, what would it be?

I believe in what Gillian has supported, been supporting in this sex positive movement. I learned recently through a psychiatrist that sex is health. But here we are taking this supplement, doing this thing, doing that exercise, trying this thing, and really if you want to do something for your health, it is sex, as plain and as simple as that. You want longevity, have sex. But there's this programming and suppression of female sexuality that even if we have advanced there's always the force that is putting us back into machines of having babies or as objects of pleasure for others. It’s important to remember that this is just the constraints of society, and we have to break from those mental molds.

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