THE HERMÈS EFFECT
With his Fall 20133 collection for the French label, designer CHRISTOPHE LEMAIRE has taken the fashion world by storm
the transition of Hermès from a perceived handbag-only business to a fashion house is the work of a succession of geniuses, the most recent being Christophe Lemaire. The journey began with Martin Margiela in 1997, and continued under Jean Paul Gaultier from 2004. Enter Lemaire, in 2010, a surprise hire from his previous post at Lacoste. If you wondered, as I did, what synergy was the young designer— known for reviving Lacoste and transforming it into a young, upbeat label during his 10-year stay there—going to bring to a French high-fashion house known for its obsession with perfection and all things chic, his Fall 2013 collection is the answer. Emblematic of the entire season, it captures fall’s mood perfectly, and is one of the best collections of the season, not least for encompassing many of fall’s key trends. And it has been building up since Lemaire’s first showing for Fall 2011.
Fall 2013, Lemaire’s fifth season at Hermès, is witness to the designer’s growth at the brand, as well as a culmination of his previous experiences. Often compared to his iconoclastic predecessor, Martin Margiela (a compliment in itself ), the designer is known to keep his offerings fresh and relevant, injecting them with practicality and attention to detail: After all, he worked at Christian Lacroix, Jean Patou, Yves Saint Laurent, and Thierry Mugler—all legendary French houses—before Lacoste.
With this collection, Lemaire played with his notion of feminine mystique, and interpreted this through the lens of other
master storytellers. “The collection was cinema-inspired; Alfred Hitchcock movies and French director Luis Buñuel’s Belle de
Jour (1967, starring the stunning Catherine Deneuve)—and the mystery that goes with their heroines,” says Lemaire. And so, the designer dressed his heroines in all the paraphernalia of the femme fatale: Leather skirts that hovered around the calf but always covered the knees, collared shirts, belts that cinched the waist, and the deepest V-necks layered over with mannish jackets and overcoats. “High waists, edgedshoulders, and discreet bangles and necklaces, very natural hair, and transparent skin,” says Lemaire, of the look he sent down the runway. More sensual than his previous collections, it offered a glimpse of skin beneath the surface. Even his colours—fawn, tan, black, berry, plum, dove, white, navy, olive, and black—added to the feel of mystery.
However, this is not all that makes this particular collection the masthead lineup for fall. Lemaire had introduced a technique of molding cashmere felt to achieve sculpted, seamless jackets in his first collection for the house, and this is the third time he has used it (to create a signature piece—seen below—for this range, adding an artisanal technique to the design archives at Hermès). “Only 10 women in Mongolia know how to do it and I have used it for a coat and a jacket this season.” Apart from these Mongolian-specialty styles, there are panelled overcoats and jackets cut from unruly pelts—one of his favourites is “Look 6 (pictured), with different layers of goatskin”—that come interspersed with Lemaire’s version of the ubiquitous moto jacket in luxe calfskin, as well as evening jackets with shawl collars and an overcoat thrown over a virginal-white dress (look 34). Jackets and coats truly are the pivot on which this collection turns.
At the end of the lineup, supermodel Kati Nescher walked out in an all-black goatskin tunic that was midway between a shift and a jacket: The brilliance of it was in the way Lemaire treated the pelt like fabric. The garment had a wonderful finality about it, and didn’t need the drama of volume or the sparkle of sequins to announce it. And this sense of control is what makes Lemaire’s collection for Hermès so desirable. “You wonder,” he says, “who is this woman?” But as the lineup draws to an end, we all know the answer. “It is about a mysterious Parisian woman; a very feminine
garçonne,” says Lemaire, unconsciously ticking another box— androgyny—in the list of fall trends he has managed to capture in a single show. “When the girls were about to go on stage, I told them, ‘walk as if you were going to a rendezvous’,” Lemaire says. And we can see they all met with absolute success.
“The collection is about a mysterious Parisian woman; a very feminine garçonne,” says Christophe Lemaire