“It’s really about being assertive. It’s about strength. About being sexy and sophisticated—and just owning it.” It was just brilliant to hear Nadège Vanhée make this statement on, as it happens, International Women’s Day. And even more so to see the dark, lean-line collection she sent out to walk the Hermès arena on its flat winkle-picker riding boots and high-heeled brogues.
She named it “Leather dandy.” By look 6—an ‘equestrian biker’ in a cropped, quilted jacket, unzipped over a black turtle-neck and belted, high-waisted narrow pants, made in glossy black glove-leather—it was already shaping up to be the best collection Vanhée has accomplished in the 10 years since she joined the house. Why so? Hermès is all about ultra-refined leather materials and techniques, the nuances of horsey codes and the details that turn collectors on. Vanhée put her finger on the slightly fetishistic side of all of that, and for the first time, drove it away from the bourgeois.
The way she described her starting point for this sounded rather mundane: “Initially, it was felt—a good friend and a support to the leather. And the brogue.” That was until you saw how all those elements came together in the hyper-slim deep-V dresses which were tailored from leather and felt, perforated with lines of brogue-tooling and cinched with the cords loops and tassels of lace-up shoes. It’s not that the subversive female-powered sexuality went overboard; it was all the more powerful for being contained within a kind of minimalist balance between the utilitarian, the off-hand chic and the very hot.
Some cases in point: a strong shouldered brown leather collarless spencer jacket with a kind of saddle-bag peplum, fastened into a chrome buckle. A riding coat with a zip right up the back, revealing a quilted leather liner, which was shown again as a second coat in its own right. Quite a lot of leather hot pants. Kick-flare leather pants. Tiny, very desirable “petit sacs” tucked under arms, and a single small ergonomically beautiful plum-mauvish saddle bag, with a large silver horsebit fastening.
It was great to feel such a strong woman’s sensibility in the room: a frisson felt close-up. There was a lot more to write home about here; perhaps a sign of the times, when feminists in fashion are no longer being cowed into being good girls. Plus the fact that Vanhée, with all her skills, did move the user-aesthetic of fashion along here: in her silhouettes, amazingly fitted but not pinching, the days of the giant and the oversized looked decidedly over.
