Here is a small idea of how honored Hermès is other Fashion designers: A few hours after the Hermès fashion show on Saturday, just après-midi, I visited the showroom of the Japanese brand A.Presse. There, the designer, Kazuma Shigematsu, told me unpasked that he collected pieces from the Hermès catalog.
“I love French vintage,” said Mr. Shigematsu. To be clear: this not only applied to Hermès: Mr. Shigematsu also called Charvet, the supplier of Royal Shirts.
But it was the name change of Hermès that ensured that the four -year -old brand of Mr. Shigematsu clicked for me. The showroom was a carousel of lamb leather jackets lined with waffle -like cashmere, bombers not made of utilitair nylon but from aristocraticly washed silk, jeans chiseled as the elusive ‘perfect’ Levis you waste your life.
“I don’t like fashion,” said Mr. Shigematsu to explain his work. “I’m looking for a new word.”
These were clothing that sang with their simplicity, which reflected trust, not chaos. They were cheat codes to dress smarter. All qualities that I could easily say of Hermès.
A.Presse was the brand I had heard about all week. “You have to go there,” I was told. I could see why.
Today’s Hermès functions on a completely different scale than the modest A.Presse showroom. With its 188 years old and firmly rooted as a supplier of the Forbes 500, Hermès is a well -oiled machine of millions of dollars. You have the celebrities in the first row: Odell Beckham Jr.; Peter Sarsgaard; and Cord Jefferson, the Oscar-winning screenwriter, who attends his first fashion show in a Hermès top jacket with herringbone motif.
Mr. Jefferson said he enjoyed the show afterwards. Difficult not to do when you wear the brand.
The very important customers are easy to recognize when they point to their favorite items of clothing that flow over the catwalk, while in mind they make notes about ordering that turtleneck and this leather. And then there is the creative director for men, Véronique Nichanian, who defies an industry obsessed with new, new, new, after she has been in her post for more than 35 years.
“I try to design clothes to make men seductive, comfortable and happy,” said the always friendly Mrs. Nichanian in an interview prior to the show.
Like all collections, these also contained the fixed pillars of the dress code for rich men: a camel walking jacket with a collar with button closure (perfect, I think, for when it is narrow in Davos), razor-sharp chinos and all kinds of cashmere knits. A Spartan suit with double row of knots, worn with a white shirt and tie, was exactly the outfit for a Hermès man who has to look at his board and tell them that the income has risen again this quarter, surprise, surprise.
The colossal Haut à Courroies bags, such as Birkins on Creatine, were plentiful. Do not look up their price unless you are interested in a heart attack.
But in this collection there were moments of sparkling ingenuity that remind you this had To come from a brand that is fifty times as old as Hermès, a brand with a hungry, new creative director who wants to leave a stamp.
A group of long coats made of piqué cotton was wax to shine like a wing. Different models wore knitted hoods that kept the middle between Little Red Riding Hood and an ‘alien’ film. I wish I could have grabbed one before I went outside again on a damp, cool day in Paris. (“I should really go into hoods” is exactly the kind of crazy thought you have as a fashion critic who deals with the last corner of the Sprint of the fashion week.)
Towards the end, a couplet of velvet came. They fit exactly as a suit nowadays hears: tight on the shoulder, but well around the hull and with some Laissez-Faire flow to the pants. It is precisely the type of design that a brand like A.Presse will look for inspiration in about thirty years.
