For 38 years — a geological era in fashion — Véronique Nichanian has safeguarded and reinvented the Hermès man with a consistency that has few equals in the industry. Her final show for the French house (staged on Saturday 24 January) represents not so much a farewell as an act of fidelity: to materials, to long timeframes, to the creative freedom that the late former chairman Jean–Louis Dumas entrusted to her in 1988 as an almost sacred mandate. In a system that now rushes ahead, Nichanian has always slowed things down. And today, as she steps away from ready-to-wear to work solely as a consultant on leather goods and scarves, Nichanian tells BoF about her final magic at Hermès — while also taking stock of the current state of fashion, which has lost its allure, and perhaps even its memory.
The final magic at Hermès
When she arrived at the maison, menswear was little more than an appendage: ties, bags, a micro-collection. She came from the school of Nino Cerruti, where she had learned — quite literally — how to construct menswear. Nichanian immediately understood that Hermès did not need reinventing. There was already an abundance of material waiting to be uncovered and enhanced. Her manifesto was based on garments conceived as objects for living, not as runway outfits. No total looks, no prescriptions: just pieces designed for everyday life, to be mixed and matched. And, of course, a maniacal attention to detail, from invisible stitching to leather that ages beautifully. “Selfish clothes”, Nichanian calls them — clothes that speak to the wearer, not to the onlooker.
Working with matter
Over almost four decades, this philosophy produced a couture-like approach to menswear, at a time when everyone else was focused elsewhere. And while the world raced towards logos and hype, Nichanian built a language of tactility, proportions and silences. A language many never truly understood: “If you don’t touch it, you don’t see the work”, she says today. Yet it is precisely there, in the material itself, that her signature has always been recognised.
The idea of luxury
And so her final show feels like a circle closing. Pieces drawn from past collections return — not as nostalgia, but as a statement about a concept of luxury that endures. And her exit is measured, considered. “The last time, someone from my team showed me something I had done at Cerruti in 1988. So I thought: OK, it’s time to stop when they start bringing me my old things”. Nichanian has never been a designer of an “ideal man”, but of real men, with their imperfections, their mistakes, their understated sensuality. Perhaps that is why she now looks at social media with suspicion: beautiful images, but mediocre clothes.
The end of the magic
Regarding the present state of fashion, the designer is candid: pressure crushes, speed empties, magic is lost. Nichanian had the privilege of time, trust and absolute freedom — something, she says, designers are no longer granted today. And as she passes the baton to Grace Wales Bonner — another outsider, another singular voice — she leaves behind a method: that of a vanished slowness.
Photo: Hermès
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