Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski was looking for a certain Hermès essentialism for fall—and somehow, among the thicket of upended show-jumping poles, two live topics of the season seemed to click together. On the one hand, pared-back minimalism; on the other, the solution to the debate around what really constitutes the values of the bourgeoisie.
Hermès is about craftsmanship and technique, and the obscure and time-consuming labor that goes into producing such items as a fine white fitted trench coat that you almost can’t tell is leather until you touch it, or a creamy beige oversized shearling coat. That kind of thing is certainly in the class of “If you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it.” Yet simultaneously, the culture here is not about showing off wealth, in the sense of flashing chains, gold horse bits, and branded It bags we’ve been seeing all over recently. That’s the ersatz bourgeoisie.
The distinction with Hermès—and especially with Vanhee-Cybulski—is that it doesn’t have to pretend to be something it isn’t. Her collection isn’t just a play on the theme of horse riding—it’s for people who own stables and country houses, and have either been born into, or cultivated, a sense of sporty ease about what they want to wear. Could be the horse-blanket coat with tan leather pockets end of things—subtly done—or equally a polo shirt dress or a bright color-blocked jockey sweater.
“I wanted to do primary colors and classicism,” Vanhee-Cybulski said backstage. She had asked an inspirational hero, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, to the show.
“He was such a big designer to me—a modernist in the ’80s,” she said, waving hello to him. “His work was very optimistic; there was something casual but sensual about it—very up.”
So on Vanhee-Cybulski’s runway: clothes that don’t need overexplanation to prove their worth. This season, indeed, all the usual pages of detailed descriptions had been left off the show notes. Instead, there was a line written by Vanhee-Cybulski that said far more: “What is beautiful must be useful.” Why? “Well—it’s a bit of the school of the Bauhaus—that process of stripping away the superficial to get to the functional,” she said.
