{"id":31615,"date":"2026-06-06T00:10:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T00:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/31615\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T00:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T00:10:08","slug":"hermes-brings-parisian-flair-to-bel-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/31615\/","title":{"rendered":"Herm\u00e8s Brings Parisian Flair to Bel Air"},"content":{"rendered":"

Any number of locations in Los Angeles are spacious enough to house a fashion show. You could stage one at the Getty Center in Brentwood or on a soundstage in Studio City. Just a few weeks ago, Dior chose the new Los Angeles County Museum of Art<\/a> as a backdrop for its show.<\/a><\/p>\n

For Herm\u00e8s, no existing structure sufficed for its first women\u2019s fashion show in Los Angeles. On a hilltop in Bel Air, the French luxury house spent a month constructing a horizontal hanger of a runway. \u201cSilhouettes on the Horizon,\u201d a sign declared outside the entrance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is stunning,\u201d the singer Miley Cyrus said as she maneuvered to her seat, looking out over the city below. For the whole of the cocktail hour, scarf-draped clients craned over the steel railing, taking pictures of the verdant hilltop and postcard-perfect Spanish colonials across the way.<\/p>\n

This show was the third of Herm\u00e8s\u2019s off-calendar fashion shows, which, employing a vernacular specific to the brand, it calls \u201cChapter Two.\u201d First was New York in 2024, then Shanghai a year later. That two of these shows have occurred in the United States says much about the financial upside Herm\u00e8s sees in a country where money is spent, and worn, liberally.<\/p>\n

At the show, clients wiggled by with the flaps of their Birkin bags undone, as if primed to yank out their credit cards and swipe away. Two women passed wearing the same trompe l\u2019oeil Herm\u00e8s dress. I lost count of silk shirts patterned with straps and saddles.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, it\u2019s business-driven,\u201d Nad\u00e8ge Vanh\u00e9e, the women\u2019s artistic director of Herm\u00e8s, said a few days before the show, referring to the label\u2019s choice of Los Angeles. \u201cWhen you start to have this idea of the collection in Shanghai or New York or L.A., the city or the place, the topography is going to take grip on your concept.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vanh\u00e9e first came to Los Angeles in the 2000s, and returned during the three years she lived in New York as the creative director of the Row. That brief, buzz-stoking stint at the Olsen twins\u2019 label put her on the radar of Axel Dumas, Herm\u00e8s\u2019s chief executive.<\/p>\n

Vanh\u00e9e, who has been at Herm\u00e8s for 12 years, admired the ever-present newness of Los Angeles, its relentless reinvention. It is so unlike the northern French town she came from, a place where everyone knows just how ancient that church is, where the weight of history feels ever present.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t go to Culver City to see the first house of Culver City,\u201d she said, signaling to the expanse of gray block warehouses just outside the window.<\/p>\n

Vanh\u00e9e made ginger nods to Los Angeles tropes. Or I at least hit on some connections: a leather jacket with accents culled from Herm\u00e8s scarves looked like something Gram Parsons would have worn at the Whisky a Go Go. A candy-apple dress carried the shine of a waxed deuce coupe. And pantsuits, with kimono-like tie closures, were in the spirit of \u201990s red carpets.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to do something way more glamorous that you could expect in Paris,\u201d Vanh\u00e9e said. \u201cGlamour here is the expression of beauty.\u201d<\/p>\n

But for the most part, these were polished, location-agnostic clothes: inky investment trenches, sleeveless gowns with Big Dipper sparkles and knife-edged leather trousers. In Los Angeles or Paris, the language of dressing well (and well-off) can be universal.<\/p>\n

A run of pretty satin dresses with pleated skirts echoed the folds of a ballet slipper\u2019s toe, an idea Vanh\u00e9e got from \u2026 well, looking at a ballet flat. <\/p>\n

\u201cDeconstructing ballet slippers,\u201d she said, \u201cwas a very interesting way of playing with construction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vanh\u00e9e took her bow wearing some very R.E.I.-functional yellow and red La Sportiva sneakers, not flats. But she did acknowledge that, in some regard, she is her own best target. She is, after all, one of the scant few women serving as women\u2019s creative director at a luxury label, and her more than decade-long tenure well outpaces many of her Paris peers. (Herm\u00e8s\u2019s new men\u2019s creative director, Grace Wales Bonner<\/a>, will make her runway debut early next year.)<\/p>\n

\u201cDo I specifically design for me? Not necessarily,\u201d Vanh\u00e9e said, dressed in a brown leather Herm\u00e8s jacket that had the goose-bumpy texture of a football. \u201cDo I have an affinity with the woman I design for? Yes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Any number of locations in Los Angeles are spacious enough to house a fashion show. You could stage…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[21513,13925,21510,22734,22735,22733,30,22428],"class_list":["post-31615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-paris","tag-fashion-and-apparel","tag-fashion-shows","tag-hermes-international-sa","tag-los-angeles-calif","tag-los-angeles-county-museum-of-art","tag-nadege","tag-paris","tag-vanhee-cybulski"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}