Travel regulations have finally eased in New Zealand, where Maggie Marilyn Hewitt spent the entirety of 2020 and 2021. The first place the designer went when the borders opened? The world’s first carbon-positive cotton farm, located in Moree, Australia. There, she enlisted photographer Dan Roberts to shoot her new collection at Good Earth Cotton, which supplied Hewitt with many of the materials in this collection.
Beside bales of cotton and springs of greenery, models pose in Hewitt’s new bicolor trench, much-loved suiting (now in hot pink and red), and new ruched jersey dresses that would look as lovely at a wedding as on a farm trip. Hewitt’s signature knot detailing appears on the poufs of rose-colored blouses and a city-slick black dress, though she spotlights a shacket in pink plaids as a favorite this season. Her design ethos is uncomplicated—she makes the clothing that she, her team, and her customers want to wear.
In silhouette and shape, Hewitt is not reinventing the wheel. But when we speak over Zoom, it becomes obvious she is reinventing something far more difficult: the culture of desire. By cutting out wholesale accounts and shifting to a direct-to-consumer model, Hewitt has to stoke the flames of passion in her clientele—and she has to do it with only 13 items each season, the result of her staunch commitment to sustainable production. Her clothing can’t only be cute or covetable; it has to speak to the essential desire to feel uncomplicatedly beautiful. The pictures in her collection imagery of Shanina Shaik colored by dusk light certainly help, but to really understand the purpose of her garments, you have to see them in motion, alive. She promises that next season she’ll be back in New York to prove her mettle—and to prove that eco-fashion can be more than just pretty; it can be purposeful too.
