Gabriela Hearst Returns to Earth

“G rowing up on a ranch, I learned about quality from a utilitarian perspective,” says fashion designer Gabriela Hearst. “Things had to be made to last, and there was always a coexistence between nature and what we were making.”

After leaving the family homestead in Paysandú, Uruguay, Hearst moved to New York and worked her way through the fashion industry, designing for a number of houses before founding her eponymous label in 2015. Gabriela Hearst became known for its uncompromising materials, sculptural silhouettes and its insistence that sustainability must be synonymous with beauty. She later served as Creative Director at Chloé, helping the maison achieve prestigious B-Corp certification – a designation honoring the company’s green bonafides – before returning her full focus to her namesake line. “My brand is really the distillation of my value system from the ranch,” she says.

Past Auction

High Jewelry

9 December 2025 | 10:00 AM EST | New York

Now, that philosophy finds natural kinship at Sotheby’s. This December, Hearst joins Sotheby’s New York as the guest curator of the High Jewelry auction, selecting 10 extraordinary pieces – from natural pearls to collectible Bulgari and David Webb creations – to be exhibited and sold alongside her own debut high jewelry design, the Alpha and Omega earrings.

“There are people who love jewelry, and then there are people who will put all their savings in jewelry. That’s me. I want to wear my money,” she says. Yet value, for Hearst, is inseparable from material integrity and longevity: an item crafted with excellence and ingenuity is one that will be cherished for generations. “I don’t look for asset value and growth. I look for originality and history. I look for something that brings passion.”

A Pery diamond wristwatch featuring an oval, portrait-cut diamond crystal (estimate: $10,000-15,000) and a set of Hemmerle’s mammoth ivory-and-diamond pendant earclips (estimate: $30,000-50,000) are paired with garments from Gabriela Hearst’s Spring 2026 collection.

“There are people who love jewelry, and then there are people who will put all their savings in jewelry.”

- Gabriela Hearst

“Why is it that we’ve adorned ourselves with these precious stones for millennia – these materials that take millions of years and all the majestic force of nature to create?” she asks. For Hearst, the allure of jewelry is tectonic as much as aesthetic, and that sense of natural history guided her as she previewed the sale. Her selections reflect a fascination with geology and transgenerational cultural histories.

Hearst often designs her garments with a specific muse in mind – past collections have drawn on Leonora Carrington, Hildegard of Bingen and Eglantyne Jebb – but the inspiration for her selections in the High Jewelry sale is closer to home. Who does she see wearing them?

“Me,” she says with a laugh. “These are all the pieces I could imagine myself wearing – or that inspire me to create something.”

This Fancy Vivid Orangy-Pink diamond weighs in at 3.27 carats and features a cut-cornered, rectangular, modified-brilliant cut in a rare and vibrant hue.

Take the magnificent Fancy Vivid Orangy-Pink diamond from The Splendor of Color collection. It’s the kind of stone that becomes a centerpiece of any collector’s assortment – an opportunity for showmanship or bragging rights. Hearst sees it differently. “I would hide the diamond,” she says, eliciting a raised eyebrow from me. “I would create something with a bit of a Fabergé mentality, where only I know that the ring has this beautiful, out-of-the-world gemstone.” That instinct – to protect what is special, to veil value rather than flaunt it – expresses her belief that the most luxurious objects are the ones we consider most precious and hold most dear.

Her longstanding admiration for David Webb – she was an early collector – is also reflected in her selections. Webb, she notes, was self-taught and drew deeply from the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His nephrite, amethyst, ruby and diamond “Demon Mask” necklace-brooch from The Geri Brawerman Collection is a standout for her. Its pre-Columbian references and sculptural form resonate with Hearst’s interest in traditional craft. And its use of amethyst is especially meaningful for the Uruguayan designer. “I have a weakness for amethyst, because it’s the stone of my country,” she says. “This piece feels like nothing else he made.”

This striking nephrite, amethyst, ruby and diamond ‘Demon Mask’ necklace-brooch by David Webb (Estimate: $20,000-30,000) features a carved nephrite mask of pre-Columbian inspiration suspended from a necklace of five rows of graduated amethyst beads.

“These are all the pieces I could imagine myself wearing – or that inspire me to create something.”

- Gabriela Hearst

Pearls hold an equally powerful symbolic weight. The auction includes an extraordinary natural pearl necklace finished with a fancy blue-diamond clasp. For Hearst, pearls represent nature’s most elegant alchemy. “Why are we so attracted to pearls? They’re basically beautiful dust,” she says. “We’re fascinated by the magic of nature.” Pearls, she adds, are products of a living organism – and sensitive enough that they should never be worn with perfume. Their vulnerability becomes part of their allure.

Hearst’s own contribution to the auction, the Alpha and Omega earrings, embodies her attention to sustainability, resourcefulness and transformation. Designed to convert into studs, drops or pendants with accompanying chains, they channel a historical spirit. “Jewelry in the 1930s and ’40s had more functionality – you dressed it up or down because you didn’t have a lot,” she explains. “It’s a very ranching ethos: if you have beautiful stones, you make the most out of them.”

Hearst’s Alpha and Omega earrings feature a modular design, allowing them to be worn as studs, drops or pendants. “It’s a very ranching ethos,” says the designer.

The earrings will be sold to benefit Amazon Frontlines, an organization that protects Indigenous lands and rights across the Amazon rainforest. Hearst’s connection to the group is personal: she met co-founders Nemonte Nenquimo and Mitch Anderson when they were honored alongside her and actor-activist Jane Fonda at the 2024 TIME Earth Award. “Nemonte possesses ancestral knowledge that we’ve lost,” Hearst says. “She understands the world from the earth itself.”

But for the designer, supporting the organization is about more than just honoring a spiritual connection between jewelry and nature. “We need people to understand that if the Amazon dies, we all die,” she says. “Amazon Frontlines doesn’t just fight for the Waorani tribe – they fight for all of us.”

In Hearst’s eyes, an appreciation for beauty is inextricable from a deeper sense of custodianship over the earth. She recalls the story of Hester Diamond, the legendary collector whose estate sold at Sotheby’s in 2021. Her collection of modern art was unparalleled. “She wasn’t missing anyone – Kandinsky, Brancusi, Picasso, Léger… But she sold it all; she didn’t care,” Hearst says. “Then she collected Old Masters, and I bought some of her books when she sold that too.”

Fittingly, Diamond spent the last part of her life collecting magnificent geodes and artifacts of natural history – some of which Hearst has also since acquired. To her, the elder collector’s trajectory is an archetypal expression of the human instinct to gravitate to, and ultimately protect, the primordial source.

“All of these beautiful jewels that sell for this incredible amount of money – they’re all crafted and given to us by the earth,” Hearst says with palpable reverence. “When you see them, you can feel their energy, feel their color. We’re the ones who give value to that.”