IN DENIM AND PLEATS, SHE DANCES HER WAY OUT OF PANDEMIC RUT
Hermès presents women’s collection in triptych, in New York, Paris and Shanghai
If you can’t travel, the collection will travel to you.
That was, in essence, the concept behind Hermès’ Women’s ready-to-wear Fall-Winter 2021 collection show, presented via a triptych, filmed live in New York, Paris and Shanghai on the evening of March 6 (Manila time).
Hermès Manila hosted a live viewing party of select 20 guests at Peninsula Manila— the luxury house’s first in-present event here since the lockdown a year ago.
In a behind-the-scenes interview with Hermès’ creative director Nadège Vanhée-Cybulski, she said the collection was her reaction to the moment, her “resistance to the complete erasure of individuality,” as everyone is cooped up at home due to the pandemic.
“I didn’t want to express melancholy or the withdrawal that’s intrinsic of the period,” she said. Instead, her goal was the opposite: to “incite the desire to go out and wear the clothes.”
The triptych’s curtain-raiser was staged in New York, a modern dance choreographed by American
dancer and choreographer Madeline Hollander, featuring seven dancers, marching in unison at Park Avenue Armory, amid orange curtains, in monochromatic pullovers, leather-trimmed wrap skirts and knee-high boots.
“Clothing plays an interesting role here, because when a model wears something, it doesn’t move the same way as when a dancer wears it,” Hollander said. “Dancers bring something else to the table, perhaps something more ample...”
Cadence of everyday life
The dance, Hollander added, takes inspiration from the cadence of New Yorkers in everyday life, the rhythms of their forward and backward movements.
For the full collection, presented in the second part from Paris’ La Garde Republicaine, Cybulski designed clothes in materials that, she said, comfort, shelter and protect— sumptuous lambskin, wools and cashmere—“without forgetting finesse, movement and sensuality.” She highlighted the section on pleats (plissé), which she said work as second skin, liberating both garment and body.
Interestingly, Cybulski elevates the Everywoman’s (and -man’s) casual uniform, the denim, as she opens the collection with a suite of denim looks, trimmed with leather and tattersall checks. The tattersall would make a recurrent theme throughout the collection, including in the pullovers
worn by the dancers in the Shanghai segment.
The show notes underscore the blurring of which clothes are “suitable for nightlife as
for everyday life.” The ponchos and coats, even a handful of the dresses and skirts, are trimmed with fringes, swinging sensually with the models’ every stride.
Bag lovers might also take note on a fresh iteration of the Birkin, where its flap becomes a removable pochette. In some looks, the flap/pochette was carried separately by the models.
There was also a mini smartphone phone holder slash vanity sling bag called Hermesway. Several models also sported the new double-tour Apple Hermès watch.
Shaping her own destiny
The designer described the Hermès woman as an “amazon,” though not a warrior in the literal sense: “but is assertive, a fighter, has balanced out of her masculine and feminine sides, is confident, strong, classical and magnetic.”
These are characteristics echoed by Hermès artistic director Pierre-Alexis Dumas, who described the Hermès contemporary woman as “independent, active and is shaping her own destiny.”
When the public thinks of the Hermès woman, they think of a Frenchwoman, said Cybulski. “But I believe it’s also important for her to be universal.”
Cybulski looked back at feeling sort of a “creative hermit” in the beginning, as people sheltered in place, either freed or constricted by the absence of outside influence. But, she added, the period also allowed her to go deeper into her own imagination.
The movements, as interpreted by Hollander and Gu Jiani in Shanghai, are representative of uncomplicated times, the freedom of movement and a challenge to rebuild, Cybulski said. It’s a sort of conversation, one that makes up for the travel restrictions. The triptych becomes the bridge of the physical and cultural divide.
In the closing dance, Gu Jiani, using movements rooted in Chinese culture infused with ballroom techniques, choreographed an all-women group, in a somewhat acrobatic dance, to showcase women’s strength. She wanted to explore the “tenderness and toughness” in the dancers’ movements, she said.
Gu Jiani used boxes as symbolic devices, representing “obstacles [that also turn] into bridges.”
The Chinese choreographer noted that boxes are commonplace objects that are ubiquitous in Chinese everyday life, while Cybulski said that those same boxes are symbolic of gifts and surprises at Hermès.
“The history of these boxes is synonymous with the boldness but also the quality one associates with Hermès.” Cybulski said.
“Boldness means finding solutions and reinventing oneself using what is available, and building something beautiful despite the constraints of the moment—while reaffirming one’s creativity. Originally the boxes were white, but because of the scarcity of white paper during the war they changed, orange being the only readily available color. Thus orange became symbolic, and is now a kind of common denominator in this triptych.”
She added, “The concept is, since you can’t come, we’ll come to see you… It feels very romantic.”
I didn’t want to express melancholy [but instead] incite the desire to go out and wear the clothes
Nadège Vanhée-Cybulski Hermès creative director