“It’s a dandy effect,” observed Véronique Nichanian as we looked at her board: “a way of dressing, of mixing things, of feeling good, and of feeling seductive.” Again she worked alongside Cyril Teste, who helped shape the Hermès mise-en-scène throughout the enforcedly-digital seasons. For this second IRL show they drew on the Mobilier National’s collection of tapestries, showing large-screened sections of the originals hung alongside. As the show progressed, these digital renderings slowly blurred and abstracted until they resembled close ups from a Turner sky-scene. Was this visually poetic transfiguration a play on the notion of patina across the music of time, or an oblique rebuke to those who seek to digitally counterfeit the house? It depends on how you see it.
By unambiguous contrast the collection worked to create precisely the effect the designer described. Dandyism is alive today but dresses differently: here Hermès put forward propositions that had my progressively dandyish benchmate from GQ “pulsating” post-show with an urge to inhabit them. His boat was particularly floated by the two-button suiting in calfskin, which beneath its soft glazed finish was in a deep off-black. The loose leg shape and almost fabric-responsive movement of the material combined to make top-to-toe leather-wearing an appealing proposition. It was worn with a pink blouse in chintzed poplin with an extra panel of fabric at the neck.
That, a little like the silk cashmere Hermès scarves worn with more conventionally fabricated long-skirted flannel suiting, acted as a contemporary substitute for the traditionally dandyish cravat. The outerwear equivalent was delivered via the shaggy Tuscan lambskin linings (removable) that fronded luxuriously at the collars in various cuts of outerwear in pale green and faded yellow.
Cut in what Hermès called technical satin, a shocking orange blouson and zingy, chlorophyll green collared half-zip cagoule were both startling examples of the generic made exceptional. In contrast two crocodile blousons, both black, were the pinnacle trophy pieces yet more inherently discreet. Shades-of-charcoal parkas in a print as abstracted as Teste’s digitally decomposed tapestries and abstract knit high-neck twinsets offered visual texture against which shone chained horseshoe pendants.
A stand-out bag named the Rock was appropriately akin to a butch Birkin, buffed up via vertical elongation and the addition of a substantial key chain running from the top front edge of the bag into a poppered flap pocket at the side. Alongside that was a semi-oval pocket closed by a shining diagonal zip: perfecto portage. Shoes, mostly Chelsea boots, were mirrored highly enough for any dedicated dandy to regard his image.
In the backstage area of this show were some pillars, which Nichanian’s team had wrapped with paper upon which were printed some of the pillars that prop up the house of Hermès. On one side were the raw materials; leather (obviously), cashmere, denim, wool, silk and so on. And on another were words associated with our interaction with those materials; stroke, brush, feel, touch, hands. Here craft and imagination combined to conjure materials into a menswear form that was, as noted at the top, highly seductive.
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