A Season of Transition at 24 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré
When I stepped inside, some forty looks were waiting for me. Moving between the rails, you could discover the collection at your own pace. You could get close to the fabrics, study the surface of the leather, look at the shoulder of a jacket or the pleat of a pair of trousers more closely than you ever could from a runway. This way of presenting allowed the clothes not only to be seen, but to be understood.
The choice was no coincidence. Walking through the room, I felt I was on the threshold of something — as though the space itself had paused in the middle of a sentence. Véronique Nichanian, who had shaped the men’s collections for thirty-seven years, had handed her role over to Grace Wales Bonner; the knowledge hung in the air, unspoken. The collection we saw in the showroom was a singular moment standing between two creative eras. It neither cast a nostalgic glance at the past nor tried to carry traces of the era to come. Rather, it read like the final sentence of a design language built with great consistency over many years.
Hermès menswear collections never try to linger in the memory through a single piece. The aim here is not to create an “it-piece”, but to refine the same aesthetic language a little further each season. That is why, as I moved through the showroom, my attention kept shifting from one piece to the next. A story that began at the shoulder of a jacket continued in the pleat of a pair of trousers, then took shape again in the knot of a tie. This was exactly where the collection’s strength lay. No piece tried to stand out on its own; all of them spoke the same language together.
This season, I lingered most over the high-waisted trousers. Made in serge, drill and gabardine, they formed an exceptionally fluid silhouette thanks to their impeccably placed pleats. Some had cargo pockets recalling military trousers, yet these details never turned into a hard attitude. Hermès tailoring continues to bring function and elegance onto the same line, drawing the ease of everyday wear closer to the discipline of couture.
Under my hand, the leather spoke a different language. When I touched a T-shirt in the finest calfskin, I met a surface as thin as paper, but far more patient than paper. Held up to the light, a jacket pierced with laser perforations made the leather look no longer like armour, but like a lattice. On an ombré shirt, the colour seemed to melt not on the surface of the material, but beneath the skin of the leather itself. A dark brown bomber jacket inspired by the contrast stitching of old basketballs made its weight felt in my hands — a weight that carried not sport, but memory. And carrying the perforation patterns of the Mangeoire bag onto a caramel leather jacket rewrote the house’s equestrian heritage on a contemporary surface.
One of the collection’s most striking aspects was the way it spread the idea of lightness across almost the entire wardrobe. Collarless shirts were layered over fine rib knits, while cotton-silk shirts featured windowpane checks or naïve rodeo motifs. In the silk versions, references to the gaucho culture of South America became more pronounced. Unlined jackets were paired with drawstring trousers; a chunky herringbone-knit cardigan could stand in for a jacket when needed. Together, these pieces proposed a light yet deeply refined wardrobe attuned to the heat of summer.
This season, Hermès also rethought the classic silk tie. In its new form — shorter, narrower and tied loosely at the neck — the tie became part not of formality, but of ease. This seemingly small change in fact summed up the collection’s overall attitude. The Hermès man was not trying to look perfect; he carried perfection with a natural ease.
The colour palette moved with the same quietness: pewter grey like morning light, ice white almost invisible, and sand tones the colour of the hottest hour of the day. Against them stood the warmth of coffee, caramel and chocolate — not clashing, simply completing. Throughout the collection, no colour upstaged another; just as with the silhouettes, every piece moved in shared harmony.
After seeing the collection, I stepped outside and, this time, looked a little longer at the building at 24 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Due to restoration work, its façade was temporarily covered with drawings from the Hermès universe. These illustrations, which had seemed merely decorative as I went in, now carried an entirely different meaning. Horses’ heads, columns, climbing vines… These symbols, which make up the memory of the house of Hermès, bore the traces of the visual world that nourished every piece I had encountered inside. In that moment I understood that some collections are not made of clothes alone. They also carry the memory of the house that brought them into being, the design culture formed over the years, and the values handed down from generation to generation. Because some houses do not merely produce collections; they build a design memory that withstands time.