37 Years of Véronique Nichanian
After nearly four decades leading Hermès menswear, Véronique Nichanian takes a bow.
See the full story in Justsmile Issue 8, Shaping What's Next.
Photography Valentin Hennequin
Styling Stuart Williamson
Text Minh Le
Ibraheem wears jacket, shirt, pants, belt and scarf HERMÈS.
It’s difficult to appraise the legacy of Hermès without shrinking it or slipping into cliché. That is largely because Hermès has over decades perfected, if not pioneered, a way of imagining what gives objects their value, whether through heritage, craftsmanship, specialty, rarity, or discretion. Among the great designers who’ve shaped the house’s 189-year-old story—from Martin Margiela and Jean Paul Gaultier to Christophe Lemaire and Nadège Vanhee‑Cybulski—in this century, none has been a steadier presence than Véronique Nichanian.
In January, Nichanian took her final bow, ending a remarkable 37-year chapter at Hermès menswear, setting a record no other artistic director has matched. (Grace Wales Bonner has been elected her successor.) This accomplishment is poignant not just in a fickle and turbulent fashion world, but as it relates to the foundation of Hermès’s longevity. True style, like true craft, unfolds over time. So how has Nichanian’s vision of the Hermès man evolved over her tenure?
Tank top, pants and necklace HERMÈS.
Well, it’s changed a lot—and, at the same time, not at all. In 2006, the Hermès man embraced a sharper silhouette, pairing a pop-collared suit jacket with an overcoat the color of scorched cinnamon bark and jeans in vermilion velvet. Ten years later, his appetite for play leaned casual: a cashmere zip-up in bright cyan under a calfskin hooded coat, whose surface crinkled like a golden-brown mushroom cap. Another decade on, he remains unmistakably Hermès, in a shearling and leather coat dyed coral pink, and a black turtleneck flecked with tiny white pips. He could toss all these pieces together or wear them one by one, still somehow looking as though nothing essential had shifted in his style. Nichanian’s goal, she told the New York Times, has never been to “change” her customers, but to “make them feel their best, their most charming, comfortable and smart.”
Pascal wears shirt, jacket (worn around waist), pants and scarf HERMÈS.
Really, the Hermès man could be anyone. Designers and writers alike often strain to pin down their muse. More often than not, the exercise flattens people down to archetypes, limiting what fashion could truly add to their lives. Nichanian’s Hermès reverseed that logic. Her menswear appeals to a simple desire (who doesn’t want a beautiful coat?) while making it clear that you won’t find a superior garment anywhere else. These are pieces that endure trends as easily as they endure wear.
This is how the universal becomes personal. Over the years, Nichanian has resisted the label of “luxury,” perhaps because she grasps its ambiguity and its limits. Think again, though, of this season’s shearling and leather coat: The precision of the design aligns with how we imagine luxury, yet it’s unlike most of what passes for it. It’s genuinely fun. The same technical rigor that perfects its proportions also produces unexpected color and texture. What man wouldn’t want that kind of joy in something he’s paid handsomely for, especially when it only appreciates with time?
Shirt, pants, belt and necklaces HERMÈS.
The story of Nichanian’s arrival at Hermès has become something of a legend. Jean-Louis Dumas, the house’s former CEO and the great-great-grandson of its founder, offered her the job with a brief that was, well… brief: “Do it as you want.” It takes a very particular person to carry out that instruction with both restraint and ingenuity. “I am my own archive,” she told GQ. “I prefer to imagine the future and search for new ideas than look back and redo things. It’s easy to redo things.” The image that comes to mind is a road built brick by brick. Today, that road is complete.
As the curtain fell on her last show, screens above the runway played a decades-spanning montage of Nichanian’s bows, as the models made their final passes. The final look—slim silk pants and a high-necked sweater, under a long, dark crocodile coat that shone like asphalt after a downpour—carried the confidence of someone with nothing to prove. How could anyone not turn back to look again, at the clothes and the years behind them?
Tank top, pants, scarf (worn around waist), necklace and bracelet HERMÈS.
Read the full story in Justsmile Issue 8, available to order and subscribe here.
T-shirt, pants and scarf HERMÈS.
