Gabriela Hearst SS27: The Memory of Afghan Hands

At Gabriela Hearst, research often begins long before fabric reaches the cutting table, and Spring/Summer 2027 turned that habit into one of the designer’s most culturally layered collections. Presented in the courtyard garden of the Petit Palais, the show looked toward Afghanistan through a century of women’s history, textile knowledge, jewellery traditions and artistic practice.

Gabriela Hearst described the country’s approximately 22 million women as the season’s muses, framing the collection around resilience, continuity and the people who preserve craft through difficult political conditions. The result placed fashion, history and production inside the same conversation, with each garment carrying both visual beauty and a clear sense of provenance.

Studying Afghanistan Through Craft and History

The research behind Gabriela Hearst SS27 was unusually expansive. In the showroom, a timeline traced Afghan history across roughly 100 years, moving through reform, conflict, foreign intervention and the present, and the same material appeared in a booklet given to guests. The approach made the collection function as a cultural study, with garments emerging from documented histories, techniques and communities.

Gabriela Hearst worked with Turquoise Mountain, the nonprofit known for supporting traditional craft communities and connecting artisans with international markets. Shoshana Stewart helped facilitate the project, while Afghanistan-born makeup artist and beauty founder Fara Homidi joined the wider creative conversation. Hearst also collaborated with Afghan-American artist Sughra Hussainy, whose paintings informed vivid textile motifs toward the end of the collection.

The runway opened with a white tailored pantsuit covered in circular shisha mirrors, a technique associated with protection and the reflection of the evil eye. From there, mirror embroidery travelled across crochet and knit dresses, immediately establishing the season’s central principle: decorative detail carried cultural meaning, while craftsmanship shaped silhouette, cut and surface together.

The Engineering of Movement

Gabriela Hearst kept the silhouettes clear enough to give the craft room to breathe. The opening suit used an elongated H-line, with a structured blazer and wide-leg trousers creating a strong vertical frame. Tailoring continued through architectural jackets, relaxed coats and long trousers, while dresses shifted toward column, slip and fitted knit silhouettes that extended the body through uninterrupted lines.

Open-gauge crochet dresses introduced transparency through negative space, allowing shisha mirrors to catch the light directly against the body. Long suede slips in chartreuse and jade brought a smooth, liquid verticality, while striped knit dresses added colour and rhythm with a soft, relaxed drape. One of the collection’s strongest technical ideas appeared in knit dresses whose hems extended upward and wrapped around the shoulders like shawls, requiring complex pattern engineering to create a continuous line from hem to neckline.

The surface work carried equal precision. Hand-painted miniature buttons, which Gabriela Hearst called the heart of the collection, were enclosed in rock crystal and silver settings before being placed on tailoring. Tiny paintings became functional fastenings, turning a small construction detail into portable artwork. Shisha embroidery, ikat patchwork, pomegranate motifs, Suzani-inspired patterns and Hazara textile references expanded the visual language, while semiprecious stones including lapis lazuli, quartz and malachite appeared across jewellery and accessories.

Material Innovation Meets a Living Craft Network

The material story of Gabriela Hearst SS27 extends beyond decoration. Silk trench coats were treated with a natural water-based resin to create water resistance, allowing silk to take on a technical function associated with performance outerwear. The experiment fits directly into Gabriela Hearst’s long-standing approach to material development, where sustainability operates through engineering, sourcing and durability.

Wool tailoring, leather, suede, crochet and natural fibres gave the collection tactile depth, while handwork supplied much of its emotional character. White garments embroidered with pomegranates referenced Afghanistan’s national fruit, and colourful pieces near the finale translated Sughra Hussainy’s paintings into textile motifs. Small leather pouches hung from cords around the neck, while safety-pin brooches carried quartz, lapis lazuli and malachite beads made with Turquoise Mountain artisans.

The collaboration also reveals how Gabriela Hearst approaches production. Hearst asked that the techniques developed for the collection remain capable of actual manufacture, linking runway craft to a functioning supply relationship with artisans. She has described the Turquoise Mountain partnership as ongoing, giving the project continuity beyond a single season. This operational detail carries particular importance because it turns cultural exchange into paid production, repeatable skill and potential future work, allowing the craft to remain connected to the people who hold the knowledge.

Styling kept the presentation disciplined, allowing mirrors, embroidery and jewellery to remain legible from a distance. Clean hair, restrained beauty and uncluttered layering supported the collection’s emphasis on workmanship, while St. Vincent’s appearance in the black counterpart to the opening mirror suit gave the central craft language a live performance context in Paris.

Gabriela Hearst Builds the Business Around Product

SS27 arrives during a period of deliberate business development at Gabriela Hearst. In January 2026, longtime sales executive Michele Cohen was promoted to the newly created role of president, with responsibility for global commercial strategy across retail, wholesale, e-commerce, markets and categories. Cohen has worked with the company since 2015, giving the appointment a sense of internal continuity as the brand prepares for its next phase of international growth.

Gabriela Hearst has consistently built the label around product quality, controlled expansion and customer retention. The company says roughly 60 percent of its customers return, a figure that supports Hearst’s frequently stated belief that “the product is queen.” The business relies on strong material standards, traceability, limited traditional advertising and a close relationship between creative decisions and production realities.

That philosophy gives SS27 strategic significance. The Turquoise Mountain collaboration connects cultural preservation with a supply-chain model, the silk outerwear project turns sustainability into product innovation, and the jewellery offers a commercially accessible expression of the collection’s artisan partnerships. Each area shows how Gabriela Hearst treats design, sourcing and business as parts of one system.

For Gabriela Hearst, luxury begins in knowledge: the person who paints a miniature, sets a stone, stitches a mirror or understands how a textile should move. SS27 turns that knowledge into the collection’s strongest asset, giving the runway a cultural depth that also clarifies how the company intends to grow.