Gabriela Hearst Celebrates Afghan Women as Her '22 Million Muses' at Paris Fashion Week

Gabriela Hearst turned her Paris Fashion Week runway towards Afghanistan on Monday, 5 October 2026, dedicating her Spring/Summer 2027 collection to the country's women, whom she described as her '22 million muses'.

Presented in the courtyard garden of Paris's Petit Palais, the collection went beyond drawing inspiration from Afghan craft. The Uruguayan designer's namesake label worked with non-profit organisation Turquoise Mountain to connect with women artisans in Afghanistan, bringing their textile techniques and artwork directly into pieces shown on the runway.

The figure behind Hearst's '22 million' description is close to Afghanistan's most recent female population estimate, which stood at about 21.7 million in 2025. For Hearst, who founded her label in 2015 and served as Chloé creative director from 2020 to 2023, the collection placed those women and a century of their history at the centre of the clothes.

Afghan Craft Takes Centre Stage

Hearst's show notes traced roughly 100 years of Afghan history, from the early 20th century through periods of reform, conflict and the Taliban's return to power in 2021. That research translated into ikat patchwork jackets, traditional embroidery and dresses decorated with small shisha mirrors. Paintings by Afghan artisans also appeared on jewellery and buttons attached to linen blazers.

'It was such a beautiful collection to research, and to make, and to really think about the women,' Hearst said after the show. The designer also stressed that difficult conditions in Afghanistan coexist with a long tradition of creative work and craftsmanship, rather than allowing the country's current political reality to become its only story.

The collection closed with white dresses embroidered with pomegranates, Afghanistan's national fruit. Floral embroidery also appeared across leather and knitted pieces, while the use of shisha mirrors brought a craft tradition associated with decorative clothing into Hearst's familiar tailoring and pared-back silhouettes.

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A Collection Built With Afghan Artisans

The collaboration with Turquoise Mountain gave the project a direct link to makers in Afghanistan rather than treating the country solely as visual inspiration. The organisation works with artisan communities and helped connect Hearst's team with Afghan craftspeople whose skills include textile work, embroidery and jewellery making.

The brand said the season 'pays tribute to the region's rich creative and textile traditions', with an emphasis on working directly with women who continue those practices. Hearst's research also treated tradition as something still being made and developed by the women practising it, rather than something belonging only to Afghanistan's past.

That focus arrives while Afghan women face severe restrictions on education, employment and participation in public life under the Taliban authorities. Five years after the group returned to power, girls remain excluded from secondary schools and universities, while women continue to face restrictions across work and public spaces.

Hearst Brings Sustainability Back to Paris

The Afghan collaboration sat alongside another familiar Gabriela Hearst theme: reducing fashion's reliance on petroleum-based materials. Silk trench coats in the collection were treated with a water-based natural resin to create a water-resistant finish intended to offer an alternative to synthetic nylon.

Hearst has repeatedly pushed sustainability through her label, from deadstock fabrics to lower-plastic runway production. In Paris, that environmental focus shared the runway with a collection built around cultural preservation, placing Afghan women not simply on a mood board but among the people whose work helped make the clothes themselves.

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