“They're very careful about who they work with and what they do,” says Brian Procell, who, with his partner, Jess Gonsalves, consults for luxury brands and runs Procell, the influential New York City vintage store and archive. The difference is that Hermès is a workshop of artisans, from Nichanian and Nadège Vanhée-Cybulski, the current director of women's ready-to-wear, to its coterie of scarf designers and its renowned window dresser, the late Leïla Menchari. Those Supreme ashtrays and Saint Laurent marble arcade machines have a clear predecessor. ![]() Maybe at the end it's costly, but it's not the point.”Īrguably, the vogue for expanding a fashion brand into what is often called a lifestyle brand began with Hermès. For me, it's working with your hand, it's attention, it's beautiful material. “For the past five years, everybody talks about luxury in terms of price,” Nichanian says. If shopping can seem like an act of mindless consumerism, Hermès makes the process of welcoming new things into your life a pursuit of connoisseurship.Īs anyone who has held an Hermès object in their hand knows, it's not merely price that sets Hermès apart, but something more intangible. And you don't really buy these objects you collect them. Indeed, what Hermès aspires to create-with its Birkin bags, crocodile-skin peacoats, and highly sought-after scarves-are not merely products. She describes her pieces as “vêtements-objets”-something akin to clothes as objects-and adds, “I'm not doing fashion.” “For me, that does not mean anything-luxury,” says Nichanian, who has helmed the house's menswear maison for nearly 32 years. In fact, when I ask the label's men's artistic director, the warm and sophisticated Véronique Nichanian, what she thinks about the word luxury, she practically rolls her eyes. It might seem that Hermès is a synonym for luxury, but the 184-year-old French house is very particular about words.
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