NEW HORIZONS: Most designers like to celebrate after their runway show, but Gabriela Hearst marked her return to Paris Fashion Week with a party two days before the event.
The New York-based designer teamed with Michael Kliger, chief executive officer of e-commerce platform Mytheresa, to host what was billed as a “supper club evening” at the bar of the Bristol hotel, her home away from home in the French capital.
“Michael said to me, ‘It’s brave of you to accept to do a party before the show.’ I’m like, ‘Brave or smart? Because I’m upstairs,’” she said with a laugh.
“It shows her confidence,” Kliger noted. “She’s very proud of the collection that is coming.”
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Just in case her energy flagged after a day of fittings at her temporary studio, Hearst enlisted concert producer Danilo A. Sueiro to man the DJ decks. “This is my best friend from childhood,” explained the designer, who was wearing a white cashmere lace dress of her own design. “He knows what makes me dance since I’m a kid.”
Guests including Helena Christensen, Kelly Rutherford, Suzi de Givenchy, Caroline Vreeland and Ella Richards mingled over drinks and small bites.
Kliger noted that the Bristol’s head barman, Thierry Fernandez, once invented a cocktail inspired by Hearst for Mytheresa’s print publication, The Album. The retailer has a longstanding partnership with the brand, and plans to offer an exclusive edit from its upcoming spring collection.
“I’m proud to say she’s picky, so she decides with whom she partners,” Kliger said.
Hearst had previously staged her spring 2021 collection in Paris in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Later that year, she was named creative director at Chloé and returned to showing her namesake label in New York.
Since leaving Chloé last year, she’s set her sights on growing her retail footprint, with plans to open a boutique in Tokyo this year, and another in Paris in 2025, after testing the market with a pop-up shop at Le Bristol in 2022.
“We knew we had to show here in Paris,” Hearst said, though she confessed it was harder than during COVID-19, when fewer brands were on the calendar. “This one’s been a real challenge.”
Ultimately, she hopes to have more control over her retail operations. “Our business goal is to become all retail with a small percentage of wholesale partners, which are going to be the same ones that we started with,” she said.
“Mytheresa understands quality in a way very few others do, and I was always so impressed with Michael because he was strategic and knew where to move, in which markets,” she remarked. “If you see the consistency of Mytheresa and the growth, good quality is very admirable.”
