Gabriela Hearst designs sustainable racing silks for Goodwood charity race

Gabriela Hearst is taking her sustainability-first luxury language to Goodwood’s most polished social spectacle, designing 12 bespoke racing silks for the 2026 Markel Magnolia Cup on Thursday 30 July at the Qatar Goodwood Festival presented by Visit Qatar. The commission folds archive prints, bespoke craft and charity visibility into a race uniform that has become as watched for its fashion as for its finish.

Hearst’s fit for the job is unusually exact. She was born and raised on her family’s 17,000-acre Uruguayan ranch, launched her label in 2015 and later became the first Latin American designer to lead a major Paris fashion house when she served as creative director of Chloé from 2020 to 2023. Goodwood has also singled out her 2024 TIME Earth Award and her place on the inaugural National Geographic 33 list in March 2025, credentials that make her one of the few designers who can bring environmental seriousness to a setting built on spectacle.

For this year’s race, Hearst has gone back into her own archive and reissued evocative prints, extending the label’s established color-and-print language into a format that is usually all function, speed and sponsorship. The Magnolia Cup silks are not eveningwear, but they still carry the same discipline as a couture look: a controlled silhouette, a sharply held image and a story that lands at a glance.

That tension is exactly why the Magnolia Cup matters. First run in 2011, the all-female charity race brings together 12 amateur women riders from business, fashion, racing, media and sport, including the first American competitor, Zoey Schorsch, alongside Charlotte Littlefield, Gemma Owen, Joanna Bovis, Nermina Pieters-Mekic and Ruth Inman. Before they ever reach the track, the riders spend months in training, fitness testing and British Racing School assessments, which gives the race its unusual mix of glamour and grit.

The charity stakes remain as central as the style. Goodwood says the Magnolia Cup has raised more than £3.5 million since launch, and the 2026 proceeds will support Education Above All Foundation, established in 2012 by Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser and credited with supporting more than 18 million children and young people across 77 countries. Hearst joins a lineage of fashion names that includes Vivienne Westwood, Sarah Burton, Roksanda Ilincic, Mary Katrantzou and RIXO, but her archive-driven approach gives the Magnolia Cup a sharper edge: less novelty, more collector’s item, and a reminder that summer event dressing is increasingly being shaped by clothes with provenance.