“A collection soft and sweet as a summer breeze, stirred by a tender strength,” is how Hermès poetically described its latest menswear collection, designed by fashion’s longest-serving creative director Véronique Nichanian. This year, she will celebrate 35 years at the world’s most iconic luxury house, and her tenure is due in part to her tireless reinvention of classic menswear, and her ability to infuse it with youthful ease and lightness so that even the simplest of suits is never boring. Instead, as her SS24 collection showed, it can be breezy, cut from technical parchment-like fabric as light as chiffon, worn with an open shirt over a gossamer silk vest, and chunky fisherman sandals. Or, it can be broken up, paired with reversible parasol-striped silk blousons, or lattice mesh shirts akin to grown-up string vests. The possibilities are endless chez Hermès: this is a house that doesn’t just make beautiful men’s clothes but shows men how to wear them.
Easy, breezy, and a little bit sexy, this show seemed to suggest. It was a truly summery collection, which is rarer than you think, given that most of this season’s collections will hit stores in January. There were cotton, linen and lambskin shorts that came so short that they’d have made Mary Quant blush, fastened by the brilliant double-strap belts that were worn throughout the show. Woven basket bags came filled with silk scarves and summer essentials as if the boys were heading to the beach or a summer picnic. The trousers were roomy and abbreviated — none of the season’s pervasive whittled waists that could cause heatstroke (take it from someone who almost passed out at an earlier show). And it all came in a palette that was as cool as an icepack: chalky grey, sandy beige, crisp white, the lightest of seafoam and the earthiest terracotta — or as Hermès deliciously put it: desert, steam, ice, sage.
The way it was all worn was just as important as the garments themselves. A short-sleeved sweater was styled with a jumpsuit tied at the waist, for instance, or a twinset left unbuttoned to display ropes of silver chains around the chest. Silk vests under organza blazers, cropped cashmere cardigans over trousers with the hems rolled up, the occasional leather jacket (this is Hermès, after all) thrown over a silk zip-up shirt. If you were a billionaire, wouldn’t you want to snap it all up, and wear each look exactly as it’s shown? Therein lies the recipe for Véronique’s success as a designer. She designs clothes that can build a world, conjure an atmosphere, invoke a desire for adventure — all without any of the distraction tactics increasingly required elsewhere. Her long tenure is a testament to the fact that time is indeed the greatest luxury afforded to any designer — and thankfully, Hermès seems to have all the time in the world.
