At the “surprisingly sustainable” New York Fashion Week, politics and the environment collide.

This was a very timely NYFW, with Gabriela Hearst presenting women activists and heroines and Stuart Vevers repurposing old leather into neo-noir homages.

The former president of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, was “statement-cast” on Gabriela Hearst’s spring runway three months after the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade, ending the constitutional right to a legal abortion that had been upheld for over fifty years.

The women’s rights advocate was one of 50 “goddesses and warriors” who attended the first fashion week since the June ruling on Tuesday. They included teenage climate activist Xiye Bastida and amputee model and activist Lauren Wasser. The women’s rights activist was dressed in a black double-breasted coat with rose gold bars flecked along the lapel.

The ancient Greek poet Sappho, who is frequently referred to as the female Homer and was only discovered by Hearst after her daughter decided to dress up as her for Halloween, served as inspiration for the program, which didn’t explicitly favor women’s reproductive rights but instead focused on those who were ignored. She remarked before the presentation, “It makes me wonder if I would have heard of her had she been born a guy.”

With the sole purpose of creating garments that women can genuinely wear, even if they come with a three- or four-figure price tag, the Uruguayan-born designer founded her womenswear line in 2015. There were a few guys on the catwalk on Tuesday, but they mostly served as accessories to the ladies and were dressed in suits of matching colors. This was an attempt to bring the women front and center of the show despite the fact that both men’s and women’s clothes were displayed.

The collection, which included floor-length merino dresses knitted like cobwebs, poppy-colored suits, and fisherman-style sandals, sat somewhere between ancient and modern Greece except inside a warm, corrugated-metal fish hangar in Brooklyn, which used to house a Democratic debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and was once a transit point for 10 million pounds of fish annually. The show’s music was provided by The Resistance Revival Chorus, a group of female and non-binary vocalists who were appropriately attired in floor-length white robes.

Hearst, who manages Chloé and resides in New York, quietly entered the fashion industry when it was uncommon for women to create for women. Jill Biden, who wore two variations of the same embroidered dress on the night of the inauguration and first address to Congress, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who wore a teal suit for a fashion shoot for Interview magazine, are two of the most well-known women in US politics. Hearst is also well-known for her sustainable manufacturing practices.