In the ever more sprawling, frantic, overcrowded schedule of fashion shows, it’s a rare and luxurious feeling to be able to slow down and examine something properly—and especially when those somethings are produced as subtly as they are by Hermès. Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski made an intelligent call when she invited the press to the Hermès store in the Rue Faubourg St.-Honoré to see her Resort collection softly tread the plush cream carpets—in espadrilles, leather basket-weave trainers, and all manner of refined, ankle-wrapping Roman sandals. To help encourage her moment of contemplation, she commissioned music—a performance by a harpist and Jarvis Cocker, who played guitar and spoke a piece of poetry that lingered over the names of flowers: “Crocus, cowslip, forget-me-not, anemone, honeysuckle ...” And so on.
It created a relaxing atmosphere for focussing in on the subtleties: fluted silk midi dresses with whooshes of godets flowing from the hip, herringbone linen safari suits, prints revived and reworked from the Hermès scarf-design archive, the high-waisted cut and leg volume of trousers, the piping that edged the cuffs and pocket-flaps of a raincoat. Vanhee-Cybulski said she’d been thinking about “The Clothes women wear daily” and 17th-century Dutch flower painting—the latter being less of a literal homage to the art than it was an influence on her color choices. “It felt like a natural step to show the pre-collection here,” she said afterward. “It felt much more intimate, and I wanted people to be able to absorb how the clothes are made.” Unfortunately, the pictures provided here were shot separately, and don’t convey the civilized sense of occasion, but suffice it to say that whether it was the use of a rope and tassel reworked scarf print on her dresses, or her deft way of placing a pair of marigold yellow pants against a shirt in a paler buttercup, this read as Vanehee-Cybulski’s most well-judged and successful collection yet.
