🙏 to news source spot @financialtimes @fthtsi & @jellison22 “When I ask Gabriela Hearst about when she first developed an ecological consciousness, she recalls early-childhood scenes straight out of the movies. “I’ve seen lightning destroy a house just like this, I remember coming from Montevideo, the capital city, to my family’s ranch, and being stuck in the mud for hours because of torrential rain.” Finally her father arrived on horseback to pull the family out of the muck. He swept four-year-old Gabi up into his arms and galloped her back to Santa Isabel, their cattle and sheep ranch in the Paysandú department, where she spent the most idyllic and, apparently, impactful years of her life. As he held her tightly in front of him in the saddle, horse, man and child charging through the storm, “I asked him, ‘Does lightning have arms?’ Because it was so overpowering.” Later in our conversation, she adds, “Nature is the ultimate beauty, and beauty is serious.” So is Hearst, who believes that nature’s ultimate beauty does not come with an inexhaustible supply of bounty to be tapped for frivolous ends. “We belong to nature, it doesn’t belong to us,”. Hearst is a champion of sustainability in fashion, both as the head of her 7 year-old eponymous label based in New York and as creative director of Chloé for almost two years. (..) As Hearst’s opportunities have grown, so has her ecological ambition. The Gabriela Hearst brand counts three standalone boutiques for around 70 points of sale, with plans to double retail sales in three years, and Chloé sales are up double digits, the company reports, due to a turnaround plan launched in 2020. Last October, less than a year after taking the design reins there, Hearst attained B Corp status for the legacy company “If you’re not working just to survive, you need to find time for service and giving to others, whether it’s time, effort or money.(..)and there’s different ways people can engage. In design, which is what I know best, we choose suppliers who are nonprofits and NGOs. She mentions @manosdeluruguay as one of her go-tos, crediting Simone Cipriani, the founder and manager of the UN and WTO’s @ethicalfashion ...”