Meghan Markle Makes News With Gabriela Hearst Bag As Designer Talks Sustainability With Porter Magazine #29

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex visit their namesake county

If you thought Gabriela Hearst would be front page fashion news because of her in-depth Porter Magazine #29 interview with muse Cecile Richards, former president of Planned Parenthood, you would be right — if only the Duchess of Sussex hadn’t carried her Gabriela Hearst satin tote on an excursion with Prince Harry to Sussex on Wednesday.

Alice Newbold, writing for British Vogue, asserts that Gabriela Hearst “is an interesting choice for the Duchess, who has not openly professed an interest in sustainable fashion before.” This isn’t AOC’s understanding of Markle’s involvement with sustainable fashion at all, reflected in a Telegraph UK January 2018 article: How to master eco-conscious style like Meghan Markle.

Ninety-nine percent of Hearst’s materials are sustainable, a key pillar anchoring the philosophy of her label. Hearst has made it her mission to redefine what luxury means right now and transform the image and idea of sustainability within fashion while she’s at it. Now that Hedi Slimane has turned Celine inside out in a cat fight with his former fashion house YSL, Hearst’s future looks even stronger. “You know, some people are embarrassed to say that [they’re designing for grown-ups] and I always find it odd,” she tells Porter Magazine, with Cecile Richards in tow.

Hearst launched her eponymous label back in 2015, inheriting the family ranch in Uruguay on by the death of her father. “It’s a grass-fed, organic cattle and merino sheep-growing ranch,” she explains. “My family’s been doing this for six generations.”

“What I really wanted was to be able to create a true, luxury American brand that was also very conscious about how we were making our product,” she says. “We call it ‘honest luxury’. I’m only interested in working with the best materials, the best craftspeople and the best mills I can find. Firstly, because I believe that when you’re supporting quality, you’re supporting passion because, as with my family business, there are mills in Italy where they’ve been doing this for generations and sometimes it takes one more generation to create a great product. And because when you work with the best materials, it means that you only need to buy a few things that are good quality, you can invest in your pieces.”

Sustainability for Hearst was a way of life that she’s grown up with. “We were sustainable out of a utilitarian perspective, that was the way things were done,” she says. “We were off the grid so we had solar panels before [most] people had solar panels, and water was drawn from the earth. It’s so remote with such vast amounts of land. When night comes it’s completely dark, you see all the stars and you hear all the different noises from nature. So, nature was a very powerful presence in my existence growing up. I think that’s why it’s a very natural thing for me to want to protect it, because I understand that actually I’m not protecting nature; I’m protecting humankind because we are the ones who get eradicated.”

Today, wool from her sheep make irresistibly soft sweaters; Hearst is working hard to eradicate plastic from her production chain, using aloe-vera-treated linen and high-tech silver, to protect pockets from cell phone radiation.

With three children, a business with husband John, the label’s CEO, a ranch to run, and a place on the board of Save The Children, Hearst is very much one of those busy women that she’s designing for. “About two years ago I drew a circle and I divided it in four to help me visualize it,” she says. “One quarter’s my professional life, one’s my family, one is the help I want to do for others and then the other one is fun. Because one quarter of your life has to be dedicated to just having fun, because you live once, right? And being alive is a gift.”

Read more about Gabriela Hearst and images from the photo shoot with Cecile Richards.

Gabriela Hearst Dresses Cecile Richards Lensed By Tiffany Nicholson For Porter Edit #29 Winter 2018