Uruguayan designer takes creative role at Chloé
Switzerland-based luxury group Richemont has appointed Gabriela Perezutti Hearst as the new director of its Chloé brand, replacing Natacha Ramsay-Levi in the role.
Ms Hearst is originally from Uruguay, where she still owns a sheep farm of almost 7,000 hectares, inherited from her father.
She launched her own label in New York in 2015 and has used wool from her own farm in her collections.
Other developments that have brought her attention in recent years include her insistence on making her runway presentations carbon-neutral. Also, in comments in an interview in March, she insisted that calling materials ‘vegan’ does not make them sustainable if they derive from fossil fuels. She said: “If it’s made out of petroleum, it’s not sustainable. If you’re a vegan and this is your principle, that’s great. But let’s not confuse that [with] being sustainable.”
In the same interview, she defended leather, saying: “As far as I know, leather is a by-product of the meat industry. Not all tanneries tan the same way; not all leathers have chemicals.”
