Hermès veteran Véronique Nichanian’s final menswear collection is an ode to longevity

By Rachel Tashjian, CNN

Paris, France (CNN) — Fashion is not a dignified business. It is messy, constantly changing and prone to disposability — of ideas, trends and especially people.

So it was heartening to see a fashion house celebrate, with pitch-perfect dignity, the departure of one of its longtime designers at Paris Men’s Fashion Week on Saturday night. Véronique Nichanian, who for almost four decades oversaw men’s clothing at Hermès, marked her final outing with a show that provided a rare moment of elegance in a tumultuous fashion business, and a collection that underscored how this ultra lowkey designer has created a pragmatic lavishness that countless contemporaries have copied in vain.

Nichanian revealed in October that she would depart the French luxury house after 38 years. A respectful few days later, Hermès announced the 71-year-old’s successor: Grace Wales Bonner, the British millennial darling whose quiet intelligence has helped her build a small empire on sophisticated, self-assured clothes.

Such a seamless, peaceful transition of power is wincingly rare in fashion, and stands out against the wider industry mood. Over the past year and a half, in what some have called the “great fashion reset,” designers have been swapped, chopped, substituted for one another and dismissed with seemingly little humanity or under outrageous pressure. An unsettled air now hangs over fashion weeks and flagship stores, where there should be excitement about new ideas. If anyone can leave at any time, or brands change their identity at the drop of a CEO’s hat, how do you know what you’re buying into when you purchase a handbag or coat? What does it all stand for, aside from a ruthlessness that, while certainly glamorous, feels so ambivalent?

Rather than a romp through her greatest hits on Saturday, Nichanian instead focused on her mandate, just as she’s always done: making extraordinarily beautiful clothes for the man who seeks the best in life. Not the flashiest or most fashionable, but the most exquisitely made, the most precise.

Her final collection featured sweaters and scarves crafted from such pure and sweet wool that they bounced with each step; suits slimmed but were not cloyingly youthful. Slightly cropped trousers revealed the shaft of sublime flat boots. A leather suit was stitched with a whisper of chalky pinstripe. There were clothes for Travis Scott (like a crocodile suit), who was sat on the front row; for the man who loves great clothes but is skeptical of “fashion” (loose leather trousers); and for the one who’s feeling a little naughty (a brown coat with punch-pink lining).

The show demonstrated how Nichanian has pioneered a language that every brand, from The Row to Uniqlo, is now attempting to recreate in their quest for clothing that transcends trend and time. For too many designers and shoppers today, the pleasure and invention of clothes boils down to something simplistic: mere perfection. Fashion has been remade into the hunt for the “perfect” sweater, the “perfect” trouser or the “right” Oxford shoe. But of course, perfection isn’t human, and so we find ourselves searching for timelessness as a defense against a world that refuses to stop changing, for better or worse.

As Nichanian has shown, season after season, it is design, not perfection, that makes clothing peerless. Why else show nubby fleece trousers with a coordinating striped jacket, which nobody needs but would be a hoot to wear? If we are to take away one thing from the Nichanian ethos, it is that clothes should not be “timeless” or strive towards perfection, but be good enough, so that, whatever happens, we feel right.

And that points to Nichanian’s greatest strength — and one we would all do well to embrace: longevity. These days, doing anything for longer than a few years can mean risking irrelevance. Longevity means going to work dutifully and doing your job. In fashion, specifically, it means you have honored your customers and put their wishes and needs above an ego that might push you to greener, or stranger, pastures. You see what people want, sometimes before they know they want it and other times just when they’ve dreamed about it — both are essential. You must be creative but, almost impossibly, on an industry schedule that demands collections twice a year or more.

Nichanian liked to say she didn’t design clothing but “vêtements-objets” — clothing as objects, lovely to behold and even more delightful to use. She made the excesses of fashion look pointless without turning to something monastic; instead, she offered sensible sumptuousness. Lines and silhouettes may have morphed over the decades, but her fundamentals remained.

After the models’ finale, Nichanian strolled down the runway as an audience of hundreds of clients, celebrities and editors offered her a five-minute standing ovation. She embraced Hermès’ artistic director; Eric Clapton’s “Forever Man” played; screens hanging from the ceiling played loops of Nichanian bowing at shows throughout her tenure. It was grand but not sentimental, and she grinned and waved like royalty without lingering. She seemed to know that this marvelous chapter of her life was over, and there is more fun to be had elsewhere.

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