Cult Gaia. Resort 2024 - Los Angeles
Jasmin Larian Hekmat's Cult Gaia is certainly one of the more interesting newer brands. And there is, as noted in my previous reviews of Hekmat's collections, a sirenic inventiveness to her designs. Representing a renewed take on the modernist imprint of the early 1960's mixed with its Hippie-esque cult like fixtures. Hekmat's Cult Gaia opens up so many imaginative concepts via her styles, and this is what draws me to fashion, is the possibilities that an individual can perceive their own impression via the styles presented.
As mentioned there is no doubt Hekmat has a fascination with the sweet spot of the bygone countercultures of the 1960's and 1970's in its renewed significance, after the conservative 1950's. Yet, paradoxically the 50's also gave the world hope, that a Utopian paradise via technological advancements and nuclear energy could elevate humanity into the future. This of course did not transpire, rather society rejected its restrictive conservatism of family values, imperialist lead wars, pragmatic consumerism while beginning to experiment with psychedelic drugs and alternative lifestyles, hence the liberation movements of the 60's, particularly the sexual liberation which gave women choice and control over their own body's.
Hekmat's vigor with Cult Gaia is seen throughout her latest collection, presented as a runway show at the The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in her hometown of Los Angeles. Hekmat's Resort 2024 collection is one of the largest to date running at 56 pieces. Accentuating the modernist sex appeal of 1960's post 1950's, just before the mid to late 60's when the counterculture began its slightly more gritter imprint on popular culture. As the wives of salary men, began to become more open to the possibility of extramarital affairs or at least envisioned the idealism as a fantasy; while their husband's were at work. So the styles presented feel pent up, with a fervor of suppressed desire, as the colour range maintains Hekmat's modernist spectrum of washed out yellows and Earthy tones. With splashes of vibrant greens and blues, there does feel like a Hippy element has settled into Hekmat's recent collections. While she has turned up the ante of the amorous, the latest Resort collection indeed raises the bar to its amatory plateau. With sheer and see through cocktails dresses, Hekmat maybe compressing her 1960's influences and fusing it with the hedonistic 70's. Which is fine by me.
A beautifully relaxed, open and appealing collection from Cult Gaia.
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(A.Glass 2023)
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