Marcia Gay Harden was in the front row at Gabriela Hearst today. One of her greatest roles was Pollock’s Lee Krasner, an artist whose work was overshadowed by that of her more famous husband Jackson Pollock. “You’ve done it Pollock, you’ve cracked it wide open,” was her most memorable line in the film, delivered after Ed Harris’s Pollock completes his first drip painting.

Laura Dern and Rebecca Hall were in the audience today too. Hearst has become known as a thinking woman’s designer in the eight years since launching her label. She cuts an elegant pantsuit, usually in responsibly sourced or deadstock materials; this time around she showed it with a white button-down boasting an exaggerated pointy collar. She’s also passionate about craft. There was an extraordinary white poncho and dress in this collection whose elaborate patterns were hand-crocheted and -macraméd by Bolivian artisans after a painting by the Haitian artist Levoy Exil, whose work draws inspiration from voodoo. The poncho took over 1,500 hours to complete. Beaded mesh dresses, while simpler, require their own time-consuming steps; to make the yarn, the glass beads are first strung on silk, which is then spun with cashmere.

Hearst has a witchy side. At a resort appointment in June she was talking up the Druids and this season she quoted from a wicca handbook and Exil’s own spiritual traditions. The collection’s freshest dress, made from black cashmere linen gauze, had the long draped sleeves of a high priestess robe. She said they were a lot of work to get right.

Witchy or not, it’s hard to think of another American brand today producing at Hearst’s level of luxury; that goes for the have-to-be-felt-to-be-believed cashmeres that come back season after season and for this spring’s special hand-made pieces from Bolivia. By now, though, a lot of this has become familiar from Hearst, and the runway format demands newness. Later this month, she’ll show her final collection for Chloé in Paris. She could come back next February having cracked it wide open.