Look really closely at the background of these pictures. What at a cursory glance might read as a splashy art installation of the common fashion-show kind is actually a wall of exotic plants. Everywhere at the Hermès store on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, the glass cases that normally display the bags had been filled with rare species of plants so that they looked like terrariums in a botanical garden. This is part of Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski’s thing—and indeed, that of the whole Hermès culture—the way they invite you to look, and the more you look, the more you say, “I can’t believe that.”
This sensation will come upon you when inspecting something like the fitted creamy white leather dress, Look 44, up close. The refinement of the tiny stitches, the rounded paneling, and the supple glaze of it is a wonder. Ditto the Hermès orangey tan leather car coat—just look at those flat, topstitched pockets! Just as easily, one could go off into a rapture of contemplation of the leather pyramide buttons on a shearling coat.
Vanhee-Cybulski said she’d planned out this collection around this idea of a flaneur—someone strolling around Paris, noticing things (sans phone, one would presume)—because it is a civilized luxury to have the time, as well as the money, to just wander, wondering, maybe while wearing those attractive, comfortable-looking rubber-soled riding boots.
So much of Hermès culture is hidden in plain sight. It’s simple seeming at first glance, inoffensive even. That’s the beauty of it, really—the insane degree of skill it takes to make something that a woman might wear for a walk in the park.
