Hermès – Autumn 2021 – Dapper Tapper Magazine

Véronique Nichanian, Artistic Director at Hermès, partnered with French playwright and director Cyril Teste to present a captivating digital show for the Hermès Autumn Winter 2021 collection.

The duo presented a vertical visual experience, set around August Perez’s minimalist staircase at the Mobilier National in Paris, one of Nichanian’s favorite locations. The camera and the split-screen offered several perspectives and let us choose a preferred angle of the model’s interactions on their way up or down the breathtaking stair. The mood was relaxed, elegant, light, and bright.

The Hermès Autumn Winter 2021 collection encourages us to renew the movement of the world. Inside-outside, the clothes leave their framework, offering a palette of games of lines and colors: a source of energy. They bridge different worlds: from the inside to the outside and vice-versa. Hybrid and practical, the garments are both casual and elegant. Distorted pockets, playfully asymmetrical are present throughout the collection that also features voluptuous or compact materials that run headlong into each other in audacious associations. The line between formal and informal is blurred.

Nichanian borrowed inspiration from saddlery, most evident in the piqûres étrivière or piqûres filantes that are discreetly visible. Graphic lines and geometrical variations design optimistic illusions of movement. An invitation to stroll, the energy of journeys. One wants comfort. The quest for suppleness and relaxation is expressed by reduced dimensions and pants with drawstring waists. The colors — cumin, glycin, H red, frost blue — are playfully blended with tones of licorice, pepper, and petroleum blue.

The easy line-up features parkas with hoods, biker blousons with high collars, zipped straight blousons with contrasted double-stitched pockets, overshirts, raincoats, three-button jackets with leather pockets, pullovers in a variety of collars, waistcoats, and cardigans.

Thinking about being comfortable in this new reality we are living in, the top pieces were paired with jogging pants, large trousers with drawstring waists and piqûres lantes or patch pockets, tapered trousers with drawstring waists. The collection is made with exquisite and technical materials, most importantly wool, water-repellent cotton, Prince of Wales Toilmac, cashmere, water-repellent technical canvas, silk, lambskin and Drive me Crazy printed silk and cotton.

“Our approach to clothing is currently undergoing a transformation, and my job is to come up with propositions. I wanted to defy categorization, erase conventional limits, and build connections between families of clothing that tend to be separated.”

– Véronique Nichanian

With the new Autumn-Winter 2021 collection, you don’t have to choose between casual and elegant. At Hermès they co-exist and in a beautiful way. Comfort, luxury, craft, and technical excellence is how Nichanian visualizes the new reality of the world.

“I want to believe in a form of optimism and pleasure indistinguishable from the creative spirit, and that is what this collection sets out to show,” Three decades at the helm of the French Maison certainly have perfected and prepared Nichanian for this.