How does a luxury fashion house globally renowned for its heavy, masterfully crafted leather goods cope with an increasingly warming and unpredictable climate? For Nadège Vanhée, the artistic director of women’s ready-to-wear at Hermès, the answer required a radical reimagining of weight, structure, and silhouette. Over the past year, the designer has been traveling extensively across the globe, directly experiencing the intensifying heat across Los Angeles, Asia, and Europe, the latter of which endured a brutally hot summer season. Those firsthand encounters with rising temperatures became the foundational catalyst for a collection built around a singular, elemental concept: air.
Addressing an audience that felt the ambient warmth firsthand, Vanhée sought to translate an invisible atmospheric element into tangible, pragmatic fashion. "Air can be perceptible, but also imperceptible, and I wanted to convert that idea into a very pragmatic silhouette," explained the designer. To achieve this, she embarked on a material-driven mission, working traditional heavyweights like denim, calfskin, and silk into the absolute lightest versions of clothing possible. The resulting lineup managed to maintain the uncompromising luxury and meticulous craftsmanship expected of the French heritage brand while offering genuine relief from sweltering environments.
The design process began with an unexpected starting point: the parka. While traditionally viewed as a strictly utilitarian outerwear piece that does not immediately evoke the classic codes of Hermès, it served as a wellspring of functional imagination for the designer. Vanhée systematically deconstructed and transformed the utilitarian jacket into airy dresses and skirts featuring sheer panels. Some of these innovative garments were equipped with subtle, functional zippers that allowed the wearer to instantly alter the length, making them shorter or longer depending on preference or temperature. This versatile approach to wearability was rendered in a carefully curated palette that mixed sunflower yellow, rich chocolate brown, and the brand’s unmistakable signature Hermès orange.
Vanhée’s conceptual exploration of air yielded several more cool, calculated tricks. Finding inspiration in the long, rectangular blades of ceiling fans, she incorporated swooshing pleats into a sharp black leather blazer, giving a traditionally rigid garment a sense of fluid motion. Similar ingenuity appeared in a chocolate suede skirt backed with contrasting yellow silk, and a vibrant orange dress securely cinched at the waist with a double-buckle belt. Other sporty dresses in the collection achieved their weightless quality by being constructed from paper-thin strips of leather applied delicately over a delicate silk mesh base, merging structural integrity with airy transparency.
The theme of ventilation extended seamlessly throughout the rest of the lineup. Air flowed freely through perforated suede jackets and open-knit dresses that bore a distinct visual resemblance to traditional fishing nets. In a bold styling choice, these net-like dresses were worn layered over statement bra tops and matching underwear, emphasizing lightness and exposure. Meanwhile, wide-leg trousers and lightweight jackets fashioned from ultra-lightweight denim and printed silk offered fluid movement and breathable comfort, proving that heavy fabrics could be successfully reinvented for warmer climates.
Accessories in the collection were likewise thoughtfully adapted to withstand the heat—a consideration that proved vital given the remarkably warm temperature inside the venue. Flat leather boots featured delicate, breathable stitching along the sides, while footwear alternatives included Capri-style sandals that were strappy and barely-there. The handbag offering focused on practicality and lightness, featuring small bucket bags—some detailed with matching fishnet elements—alongside versatile cross-body styles and slim leather clutches that avoided bulk.
Despite the collection’s climate-conscious ethos, the atmospheric conditions inside the show space provided an ironic backdrop. Many of the models walked the runway wearing thick stacks of heavy leather bracelets. While undeniably chic and true to the house’s leather heritage, the accessories looked undeniably warm given the ambient temperature in the room. Even before the first model stepped out onto the vast, square runway, front-row celebrities, including actress Sofia Vergara, were visibly fanning themselves with the printed show notes to combat the indoor heat. The environmental reality outside had clearly caught up to the runway, leaving attendees with a lingering thought: next time, Hermès, please turn up the air conditioning and let the air flow just as freely inside the venue as it did down the runway.
