NFW/SPRING 2027 Inside Cult Gaia Secrets: The Language of Behesht

A closer look at Cult Gaia’s universe, where Persian notions of paradise meet sculptural glamour, transformation and the quiet poetry of beauty emerging from unexpected places.

There is something quietly radical about imagining paradise not as an untouched landscape, but as something capable of growing through concrete. For Spring 2027, Cult Gaia enters precisely this tension with Behesht, a collection shaped by the Persian idea of paradise and by the fragile beauty that emerges from places marked by resistance.

Cult Gaia/ Editorial reproduction

Presented in New York, the collection moves from darkness towards light, mirroring designer Jasmin Larian Hekmat’s personal meditation on grief, transformation and celebration following the loss of her grandmother. Rather than translating mourning into solemnity, Hekmat allows it to become a form of renewal.

The clothes inhabit that contradiction. The opening looks are darker and more restrained — an olive suit with sculptural shoulders, sharply considered tailoring, and silhouettes that feel almost architectural. Gradually, however, the severity dissolves. Plissé, flowing chiffon, floral transparency and shimmering gold introduce movement, sensuality and a distinctly more optimistic vocabulary. A golden chainmail skirt catches the light with every step, while hand-painted silk gowns appear almost feathered through dip-dyeing.

Cult Gaia/ Editorial reproduction

What makes the collection compelling is the way Cult Gaia allows softness to confront structure. Concrete becomes a metaphor rather than merely a setting: rigidity against organic life, permanence against transformation, grief against joy. The runway itself embodied this philosophy, with flowers literally falling from above as the final looks emerged — an almost theatrical gesture of beauty reclaiming space.

There is also a subtle expansion of the Cult Gaia woman. Menswear enters the conversation through boxy linen tailoring, tweed board shorts and relaxed proportions, suggesting that the house’s sensual universe no longer belongs exclusively to one silhouette or one definition of glamour.

Behesht ultimately proposes something more profound than escapism. Paradise, Hekmat seems to suggest, is not a place we simply find. It is something we cultivate — sometimes precisely where it should not be able to exist. And perhaps that is fashion at its most meaningful: the ability to make beauty grow where the world has taught us not to expect it.