Cult Gaia Finds Beauty After Darkness

Jasmin Larian Hekmat turns grief into movement, texture and transformation for Spring 2027

Cult Gaia knows how to make an object people want to photograph. Jasmin Larian Hekmat built much of the label’s extraordinary visibility on that instinct, from the Ark bag to dresses engineered around sculptural cutouts, fringe and movement. At her second New York runway show, however, the more interesting proposition was what happened when that instinct for spectacle was given something heavier to carry.

Spring 2027 was titled “Behesht,” the Persian word for heaven. Hekmat conceived the collection following the death of her grandmother, Mommy Aghdas, earlier this year, approaching grief not solely through darkness but through the strange coexistence of mourning and celebration that can follow loss.

The collection traced that emotional movement physically. It began in deeper, more austere territory before gradually opening into colour, transparency, metallic surfaces and, eventually, flowers.

The Gilder Center at New York’s American Museum of Natural History provided an unusually appropriate setting. Designed by architect Jeanne Gang, its vast, curving concrete interior has the appearance of something geological rather than constructed. Hekmat was drawn to the contradiction of a hard material made to appear soft. Cult Gaia frequently performs the reverse operation, taking pliable materials and manipulating them until they acquire an almost architectural presence.

That tension was visible from the opening look. Deep olive tailoring arrived with dramatically built shoulders and abbreviated trousers, establishing a severity not normally associated with Cult Gaia’s sun-soaked vocabulary. Plissé was basketwoven to give it greater structure, turning a fabric associated with movement into something considerably more substantial.

The collection became progressively less guarded from there. Gold discs previously associated with Cult Gaia’s accessories were connected into clothing, including a metallic skirt whose thousands of rings announced themselves audibly as it moved. Tweed appeared with fringed board shorts. A plum plissé shirt incorporated its own necktie. Sheer floral pieces brought the collection closer to the sensual holiday wardrobe for which the brand is known, but they now existed within a much broader proposition.

Menswear continued that expansion. Introduced by Hekmat only recently and still secondary to womenswear, it nevertheless produced some of the collection’s most useful departures. A slouchy black linen tailoring look offered an appealing counterpoint to the sculptural femininity elsewhere, while board shorts and unconventional fabric treatments suggested that the Cult Gaia man may become more interesting precisely because the brand has fewer established rules for him.

But Hekmat was never going to abandon beauty for austerity. By the final passage, the collection had moved decisively toward release. Long gowns appeared to erupt in soft feathers, but the effect was an illusion. They were constructed from strips of silk organza, hand-painted and dip-dyed to create extraordinary featherlike movement without feathers actually being present. As the dresses moved, their surfaces separated and fluttered, making the technique difficult to decipher from a distance.

Then came the petals. Pink flower petals fell over the runway for the finale, completing a progression that could easily have tipped into sentimentality. Instead, it worked because the collection had earned the moment. The flowers arrived after the severity, not instead of it.

This is also where Cult Gaia appears to be undergoing a more consequential evolution. The brand's talent for creating instantly desirable objects has never really been in question. The Ark bag proved that more than a decade ago. Neither has Hekmat’s understanding of the visual economy in which contemporary fashion operates. She knows exactly what will stop a scroll, generate a photograph or become the dress everyone suddenly wants for summer.

The harder task is turning that fluency into a complete fashion language. Spring 2027 made a convincing argument that Cult Gaia is getting closer. Tailoring mattered. Menswear mattered. Fabric manipulation carried ideas rather than merely decoration. Even the most obviously viral pieces, particularly those deceptive silk gowns, were supported by technique.

The collection did not reject the escapism on which Cult Gaia has built its world. Nor should it. By the time sheer florals, gold surfaces and cascading petals appeared, pleasure had reclaimed the runway completely.

But “Behesht” gave that pleasure an origin. Beauty here was not presented as an escape from something difficult. It was what emerged after passing through it.