Most farewells are sad, but Gabriela Hearst’s departure from Chloé with her final Seine-side show for the house on Thursday afternoon felt very happy.
A show – and very much her best collection for the house – that ended with Mangueira, a stonking 20-piece Latin band, founded 95 years ago, storming onto the runway. To be joined by Hearst who stomped in between band members and around the models on the runway, located at Port de la Bourdonnais.
She will now return to New York to focus on her own signature collection, but leaves Paris proudly after having written a stylish chapter in a house that is an essential French fashion institution. The likes of Karl Lagerfeld, Martine Sitbon, Stella McCartney and Phoebe Philo were creative directors at Chloé before Hearst, so she certainly mixed with good historic company.
After a show that opened with a series of beautifully cut, one-shoulder multi ruffled dresses, twisted into a shell shape on one side. And continued with a series of great coats, gathered at the shoulder to create great humungous leg of mutton sleeves. Topped by a marvelous black leather motor-cycle jacket elongated into a general’s great coat.
All worn with great gaucho boots with concave heels and accessorized with shell-shaped bracelets and baubles.
For evening, Hearst ramped up the rouching to great effect, with some stunning leather cocktails and a very neat ochre Grecian velour gown, before her Latin band marched onto the slanting runway, to much cheering, and the Uruguayan designer joined them, leaping around with her cast.
“It is a far, far better thing that I do now than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known,” read Charles Dickens’ famous final line to a A Tale of Two Cities.
Which could have been said about Hearst, who exits one fashion capital for another without any critical execution, and instead a giant shower of applause.
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