Nehera dates back some 80 years to when Czechoslovakian businessman Jan Nehera developed a vertically integrated clothing brand sold by more than 130 retailers across three continents. The business model lives on more so than its visual codes, which means that most of us carry no real aesthetic frame of reference for the label and that Samuel Drira, Nehera’s creative director since 2014, has had a decent amount of latitude to establish a contemporary identity.
With this collection, he continued to express much of the same calm grandeur that he explored in his former life as a creative consultant for clients including The Row, Christophe Lemaire, Hermès, and Damir Doma. The elusive equilibrium of fluidity and shape, however, came across as very much his own. Post-show, Drira revealed—a bit sheepishly, as if he thought it might sound hackneyed—how he had conjured up the idea of a woman surrounded by fog. But he also specified “from the back,” which helped explain the presence of the zippered vents, left open to confirm volume, and a statement cape anchored at the back with two utility pockets. The strength of this lineup owed largely to its varying architectural amplitudes: Prince of Wales suiting and velvet in tones of wet sand and limestone draped without droop. Blousons, tunics, and skirts all cocooned in relation to one another, sometimes layered in a single look. Whether worn by the youthful models or the veterans, the suede wedge boots seemed like a good fit.
At the risk of sounding New Age–y, the overall vibe felt holistic—even more so given how we were situated in one of the halls of Paris’s national library; here, the collection’s palette echoed the sculpted reliefs overhead while the supple grainy leather pants evoked old book jackets. In fact, from the way he stretched a coat collar to the offset panels of a sleeveless top, Drira appeared to be rewriting the classics.
