Inside Véronique Nichanian’s Remarkable Run at Hermès

The Hermès menswear head has left the house after nearly 40 years. 

Following the death of Karl Lagerfeld in 2019, Véronique Nichanian at Hermès became the longest-serving creative director in Paris. But now, aged 71, she, too, has stepped aside as men’s artistic director of the maison after 38 years. 

Her final show was the Fall-Winter 2026 season at Mens Paris Fashion Week in January – although she will continue to do some work on men’s silk and leather goods.

Her aesthetic legacy is all in the details, the love of which came from her father who favored “the tiny detail on his jacket, inside his pocket, on his pants. And never a logo,” she said in a recent interview with fashion critic, Tim Blanks. 

To put on a Hermès jacket was to discover something new, something that surprised, delighted, and lifted the spirits. I remember trying on a navy wool blouson at the brand’s Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré temple of elegance. It had pitch-perfect Parisian dignity, of course – and then I put my hands in the pockets. They were lined with fake fur so carefully woven it felt real. 

No-one would ever see that detail, but I knew it was there. “I want to make selfish clothes,” she told Paul Croughton, Elite Traveler’s editor in chief, a few years ago, speaking on just this subject. “When you touch them and feel the material, you say, ‘Oh, my God.’ That feeling is for you first.” That was more than enough for me. 

In many ways Nichanian was the anti-fashion fashion designer. Her aesthetic did not veer wildly with the seasons or a change of CEO. She liked to describe her collections not as high-falutin art but rather “vêtements-objets” – clothes as objects. 

They should be elegant and enjoyable to wear, of course, but even more delightful to use. She favored straight-leg leather trousers, hooded shearling parkas, straight-cut wool felt jackets, and flannel suits. Her runway shows were simple and elegant, not splashily theatrical. 

Nichanian liked the new but loved the old. “Vêtements d’aujourd-hui and pour longtemps,” was her mantra – clothes for today and for a long time. A jacket that had been deftly repaired meant more than a new one. “It doesn’t only have a price, it has a meaning,” she explained. It was the way fashion started and, to many, was always meant to be.

One of the few women to establish herself in menswear was personable and courteous in an industry in which monstrous and sometimes toxic egos are indulged. “She is always polite, always happy to talk,” says one Paris-based fashion writer.

She did not search for job after job as many modern designers do, seeing themselves as guns for hire. Axel Dumas, the sixth-generation of the Dumas family to run Hermès and nephew of Nichanian’s first boss, lauded her commitment. “One thing I want to praise in this turbulent time is loyalty,” he said. 

Nichanian could develop her trademark unique fabrics and details because she had that rarest commodity in fashion these days: time. She was from an era when “research for a new collection might involve a trip to the library or some other bookish facility,” Blanks points out. 

Now the industry is all about screens and speed. “It’s going faster and faster,” Nichanian said as she stepped off the catwalk for the last time. 

Asked how she felt about an industry beset with problems of labor standards scandals, greedflation, greenwashing, and over-supply as designers endlessly chase “the new, new thing,” Nichanian told the Business of Fashion: “There’s so much change, it loses something magic, the something that makes people happy. 

“When I talk to my friends at the different houses, they’re not happy. It’s not only insecurity, it’s pressure. The houses have to find the right créateur and sometimes they don’t give them the time to express what they want to express.” 

Good job then that Nichanian’s successor, Briton of Jamaican descent, Grace Wales Bonner, whose quiet intelligence has helped her build a small empire on sophisticated, self-assured clothes, has plenty of time to manage the transition. She was appointed last year, and her first show will not be until next January. 

Some fashion observers question whether someone who is not French can “get” Hermès. Nichanian has not yet met Wales Bonner, the first black women to head a major menswear label. But I wager she would like nothing better than to see her blow a giant British raspberry at the past and forge a fresh yet still tres Francais, tres correct style for men who want the best or nothing.