Sitting in Paris and watching the weekend’s Women’s Marches from afar was a beautiful and stirring sight to behold, a cross-generational (and also cross-gender, it has to be said) call to action, and demand for respect, in defense of civil rights. At Hermès the following day, there was a sense of determination and purpose in the way that the women walked the iconic French house’s runway—covered incidentally in soft, springy moss, intended to evoke natural, earthly beauty—and there was nothing coincidental about that. Backstage after the show, artistic director Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski said that she was designing for a woman who’s “assertive, who’s free . . . she has confidence; I am who I am.”
Vanhee-Cybulski’s use of the moss was a celebration of the elemental forces of the countryside, particularly that of northern France, where she hails from, but it was also intended to heighten the slickness and the sharpness of her collection. She drew on a hyper-luxe idea of the great outdoors, with some strong outerwear—a red quilted horse blanket transformed into a coat, for instance, or a soft, flowing khaki trench, which rather niftily went over an ivory silk blouse and wide rose pink trousers. Much of what was on show here continued to highlight the exemplary skills of the house’s artisans, such as the gleaming black leather spliced with deep navy silk pleated skirt, cocoon-like furs treated to look like corduroy, or the continuing perfection of the house’s bags, particularly a tiny camel clutch adorned with a gold metallic H closure.
If the overall vibe of the silhouettes—loose, easy, long, belted—and the pieces—graphic scarf-print blouses and cardigans, paneled culottes, high-waisted leather skirts—were redolent of the ’70s and early ’80s, that’s hardly surprising, evoking as they do the era feminism really took hold of women’s lives, empowering them to make, and demand, change. As if to underscore that notion, Vanhee-Cybulski paired almost everything with either sneakers or super practical boots—ultra-flat in snowy white or scarlet leather; chunky and lug-soled—because we all know what boots are made for: walking.
