Hermès’s “Genuine” A/W '21 Collection

For autumn/winter 2021, Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski created an Hermès collection to reflect a genuine and assured wardrobe for post-pandemic times – presented in a series of live events in Paris, New York and Shanghai.

The collection was rooted in a genuine wardrobe

“They’re more than real clothes,” Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski said of her collection. “They’re genuine clothes.” On a handheld FaceTime call, the Hermès designer wasn’t just mastering the art of the digital collection preview, but reflecting her own point. For all the virtual reality of this strange moment in time, there’s something so genuine about an artistic director – a position so exalted in fashion – guiding you through her collection on her own iPhone, panning the camera as a model walks, closing in on a detail, or filming inside a bag. Vanhee-Cybulski’s handheld endeavours captured – on a broader scale – the message she wanted to convey with this collection: accentuating an authentic and essential wardrobe.

It was presented as a cross-continental triptych

Planning her show, Vanhee-Cybulski asked herself: “How can we be creative in these times? How can we keep a bond, and have solidarity?” She conceived a global format to express the movement so key to a season that will follow a year of confinement. Broadcast live, the presentation kicked off with a dance performance in New York, where choreographer Madeline Hollander interpreted the way New Yorkers walk, and how these movements interact with their wardrobes. After the show itself, staged in the Garde Républicaine in Paris, choreographer Gu Jiani closed the triptych with a live performance from Shanghai, conveying through dance the conviction Vanhee-Cybulski wanted her collection to reflect.

Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski called it a reset

“After a reset, you start with a white page and some black ink, and you begin to write your story,” Vanhee-Cybulski said. Timed for autumn, when we’ll hopefully be stepping back into the real world, her collection was founded in the idea of the wardrobe reset: stripping down our relationship with fashion to its basic needs, and rebuilding it from there. In that process – for, after all, this was fashion – she took comfortable and durable components from the classic wardrobe such as denim, leather and knitwear, and slowly started to elevate them through fabrics and surface decoration.

The collection proposed new classics

“I love clothes. And because I’m interested in the construction of clothes, I’m interested in creating new classics,” Vanhee-Cybulski said, demonstrating a parka morphed into a poncho – a favourite around the runways this season. The eternal symbol of comfort and security, she spliced blankets with jackets and rendered some in leather. Her knitwear took on sculptural shapes through embellishment, painting a strong and assured silhouette also reflected in the sturdiness of her architectural denim constructions. The sparkly dresses at the end of the show? Plissé painstakingly covered in glistening net embroidery. Vanhee-Cybulski herself emerged wearing a disposable orange mask that look very Hermès – begging to be put into production.

It reinvented classic Hermès accessories

Employing her reconstructive approach, Vanhee-Cybulski deconstructed the Birkin bag into a twofer. Normally a part of the bag’s construction, she turned the inside lining into a pochette which could be worn on its own – as a large clutch – or styled inside the bag as an enhancing design feature. Setting her sights on the Carré scarf, she shrunk it to the size of a coaster. “It’s so cute. You can wear it around your wrist, do a little bow on your denim, attach it in your hair,” she noted. And, as a nod to the lipstick Hermès launched last year, Vanhee-Cybulski designed a leather holder which popped out your lipstick at the pull of a string.