Trying to describe Hermès is an exquisite form of torture to a non-French person. Somehow, the foreign tongue (I mean English) simply cannot find words to explain the ingeniously crafted, superfine fabrics and leather it uses without sounding pretentious (a well-known Anglophone phobia). Even worse, the values of the house are so restrained and so coded as to be next to undetectable to the uninitiated. Being in on them involves far more than being alert to the occasional H logo on top of a bag strap, or congratulating oneself for recognizing that Hermès silk scarves are being incorporated into clothing, as Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski did (again) this season.
In a nutshell, Hermès is the essence of the cultivated, inbred French point of view that if you have wealth, it must be spent so that it doesn’t show except to those of your class. And by the way, a woman must never blunder by trying to be sexy, appear to wear makeup, or have “done” hair. Foreign women are half-blind to all these nuances, as they run counter to most of our instincts, yet still we are obsessed with cracking the secret codes. Both Kris Jenner and Janet Jackson are apparently amongst the intrigued: They were onhand at the show to view how Vanhee-Cybulski would set out the Hermès principles for Spring.
She did it with a simplified sequence of blue-black tailoring and grid-patterned black-on-cream tops and pants, and mustard-color dresses in cotton and leather, accessorized with large quartz and clear resin cuffs. Something of Vanhee-Cybulski’s background as a former design director for The Row figures in here: She’s brought a sense of relaxed city-sportiness to the picture, showing Hermès trainers with many looks and dialing back on the horsey heritage for the moment. It’s not showy “fashion” that is being sold here; more a carefully calibrated sense of a lifestyle which consciously rises above trendiness. For those who want to belong to it, the quality of the materials will be explained in the ritual of buying at Hermès, where the quiet mystique of all this Frenchness is fully laid out.
