{"id":430302,"date":"2026-05-07T16:47:38","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T16:47:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/430302\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T16:47:38","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T16:47:38","slug":"gabriela-hearst-rachel-scott-and-veronica-leoni-talk-about-leadership-challenges-and-being-female-in-a-male-dominated-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/430302\/","title":{"rendered":"Gabriela Hearst, Rachel Scott and Veronica Leoni Talk About Leadership, Challenges and Being Female in a Male-dominated Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t \u201cDo not do this job if you don\u2019t like problems,\u201d said Gabriela Hearst<\/a>, founder and creative director of her namesake label Tuesday night. <\/p>\n

\n\tHearst was speaking about her career to a roomful of students and industry executives at the Parsons School of Design, along with Rachel Scott<\/a>, founder and creative director of Diotima and creative director of Proenza Schouler<\/a>, and Veronica Leoni, creative director of Calvin Klein<\/a> Collection. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe panel discussion, titled \u201cWomen Leaders Crafting a New Fashion Future,\u201d was organized and moderated by Julie Gilhart, fashion consultant, and presented by the Gromek Institute for Fashion Business.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile women make up 75 percent of fashion graduates, the power at the top of the industry presents a totally different picture. Only a small fraction of the industry\u2019s top roles are held by women. The conversation explored how Hearst, Leoni and Scott have built authority in the fashion industry still shaped by unequal power, and how different their paths were. The women talked about hurdles they face every day, even at the top. <\/p>\n

\n\tEach of the designers shared their back story, and Gilhart asked them when they finished school and were entering their careers, what were their dreams like? And what is something that they did back then that still informs them today?<\/p>\n

\n\tLeoni,<\/a> the first woman to serve as creative director of Calvin Klein<\/a> Collection, said when she was starting out, rather than join a huge company where she would be just a number and would be doing photocopies, getting coffees and running around, she joined \u201ca tiny little brand\u201d that was in the center of Italy. They were a family-run company. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAnd I had the chance to kind of learn everything. I still work with the same method\u2026It\u2019s actually the most humble way for me to remain extremely connected to my roots and my training,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\n\tShe said she didn\u2019t attend fashion school so she came to the job \u201cwith just a huge ambition and some sort of self-trainee approach, and that gave me everything.\u201d While today, Leoni is part of a huge team at Calvin Klein, she said she likes to keep the design team \u201cextremely contained. I like to be accessible. I like to speak to people. I like to not close the fitting room door.\u201d She said she likes to make sure there\u2019s a certain transparency. \u201cI love when the atelier starts to read my mind,\u201d said Leoni.<\/p>\n

\n\tScott, the first Black woman to lead a major fashion house in the U.S., explained that she\u2019s from Jamaica and studied arts and French. \u201cI knew I wanted to design and had big ambitions to be a designer as well, but I just had the opportunity to study somewhere other than Jamaica,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\n\tShe ended up in Italy studying fashion for a year. \u201cIt was a very short, intense program in Milan. And then I ended up getting an internship at Costume National.\u201d She was on the design team working on the show collections. \u201cAnd a lot of it was just experimentation, play and lots of material manipulation, which obviously stuck with me because I\u2019m quite obsessed\u201d with materials to this day. \u201cI learned everything working there, more than in school. Nothing against school obviously. But I learned so much about the process and craft, and I just gained an enormous amount of respect for craft, for Made in Italy, but not just Made in Italy.\u201d She said that perhaps what lasted the most was the idea that there are these traditions of craft that exist globally.<\/p>\n

\n\tHearst <\/a>said she was grateful to be talking to students and realized that this was the first time she\u2019s ever sat on a panel with three female designers. \u201cI\u2019ve never experienced this so I feel so lucky to be sitting with fellow creative designers that are female,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe told the audience that she grew up on a ranch in Uruguay \u201cand so the only thing I knew was gauchos, sheep, cow manure and horses.\u201d She said her mother still lives off the grid so now there\u2019s solar panels, but there was no electricity. \u201cThere was just a generator that would be there for two hours in the evening, and the water was from the mill, and there was radio, and that was it, so imagination\u2019s my entertainment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe didn\u2019t know what to do when she grew up, but she realized, \u201cThis is not for me. I need to get out of here, but I knew it had to be something creative, because I kept on drawing all my life. I have full collections of shoes that I actually did at 17, full drawings.\u201d She went to audio visual school, and thought communications and media, \u201cbut I knew I wanted to do something that was creative.\u201d She said she moved to New York, and after trial and error and failing, she fell into fashion. \u201cAnd it was the first time [she thought], \u2018I have a grip on this. This is what I like.’\u201d She said she started in sales, doing signs, screening anything she could. She started her first company in 2003 with $700 and two other partners called Candela, which was the foundation of everything.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen asked what Hearst keeps close to her heart today, she said, \u201cSketching and writing things down, writing objectives down. You can go back to my list and to the dreams and structuring, because I would call them wish lists.\u201d She said she would write down what she wanted to achieve, and what she wanted to do, and put pen to paper, \u201cand you really visualize what you want. It also relieves the anxiety of the unknown, of what obstacles you have.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHearst said she was talking the other day about there being so few women creative directors of global fashion brands. \u201cBut actually there are lots of women designers who own their own businesses, quite a lot, especially in New York. I almost think that maybe it\u2019s pragmatic, but maybe it\u2019s also this idea that this system isn\u2019t set up for us, and so we just have to figure it out ourselves, and I think that\u2019s true of the three of us,\u201d said Hearst. She said that after World War II, the brands that we know today were also founded by women \u2014 Lanvin, Madame Gr\u00e8s, Schiaparelli, Chanel, Chlo\u00e9.<\/p>\n

\n\tAsked how they claim their space in a male-dominated industry, Leoni said, \u201cI feel that we do fight every day, with your own venture, with our own brand. It\u2019s actually cultural. I feel there\u2019s a certain male gaze, a certain patriarchy, that is kind of ruling the culture. And I feel that influences everything we do. So I feel that as women in the world, not just women in fashion, we\u2019re just trained to fight, just simple as that every day. So that space around us needs to be claimed with a louder voice and claimed with the strongest idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tScott said if space is not going to be made for you, you have to carve it out yourself. \u201cBeing from another country, being an immigrant, being queer, being Black. There\u2019s multiple kind of lines of war that you have to fight against,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\n\tHearst said it\u2019s important to stick to your values. \u201cWe are all obsessive,\u201d she said. With a passion for sustainability, she recalled back in 2018, when she decided to change all of the packaging in her company and they researched biodegradable packaging and developed recycled cardboard hangers rather than plastic ones. When it came time to ship to department stores, one department store said they were going to apply surcharges because they didn\u2019t fit in their manual. Hearst told her head of sales to tell the department store that she would not change the hangers, and the store was not going to charge them. \u201cWe realized it was a risk and they may lose the order. It was a very substantial order, but I was going to stand up for my values. And guess what \u2014 they accepted the hangers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tScott and Hearst were asked how they manage or managed designing two brands at the same time. [Hearst is no longer designing Chlo\u00e9, and Scott designs Diotima and Proenza Schouler<\/a>].<\/p>\n

\n\tScott said the creative part is one thing and the logistics part is a totally different one. \u201cYou have to surround yourself with people that you trust. And I think the daunting parts about being a designer going into business is that you think you don\u2019t have the experience. You don\u2019t have an MBA, but you do actually have relevant experience. I worked in the industry for 17 years before I launched my brand, and so of course, I was thinking about the business side a lot. I think there\u2019s this idea of being an expert in something that can be off-putting to creatives. I think people speak to designers, especially young designers, in a way that makes them feel like they don\u2019t have the instinct or the judgment to be able to run their own company, which I think can be dangerous. I think you know best\u2026.anyone can give you advice. You should take advice from everyone, but you should always trust your voice as the final deciding factor,\u201d said Scott.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn running her own business, Scott said, \u201cEvery day it\u2019s like something\u2019s on fire. The company\u2019s always on the verge of imploding\u2026. To be a designer and a business owner, you have to have a high level of amnesia, and I think just pure amnesia and lot of obsession and a lot of love for what you do. Because when I say that there\u2019s a problem every day, there is literally a problem every day. It doesn\u2019t matter how well your business is doing,\u201d said Scott.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cDo not do this job if you don\u2019t like problems,\u201d said Gabriela Hearst, founder and creative director of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[13699,146,38391,85,46,201818,148918],"class_list":["post-430302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-calvin-klein","tag-entertainment","tag-gabriela-hearst","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-parsons-the-new-school-of-design","tag-proenza-schouler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}