At Hermès, Luxury Doesn't Take Itself Too Seriously

15 Jul 2023

Walk into the Hermès flagship store in New York and you’ll think you’ve gate-crashed a Supermarket Sweep for millionaires. The well-turned-out shoppers seem primed to drag an arm across a shelf, gathering as many pieces as possible from one of luxury’s oldest brand names. Of course, there’s more restraint—and far fewer shopping carts—in this twenty-thousand-square-foot temple of tastefulness that opened on the Upper East Side last October.

“The store is really a masterpiece,” says Véronique Nichanian, artistic director of the Hermès men’s universe since 2008. “For a big store, it feels really intimate.” It’s also, crucially, a way to spotlight Hermès’s excellent menswear, which Nichanian has been shepherding for a mind-bending thirty-five years—starting in 1988, when she was appointed artistic director of men’s ready-to-wear. That longevity is rare in any industry. In fashion, she’s a unicorn. During her tenure, Hermès men’s has morphed from the bougie bon chic, bon genre style of the late eighties—all blazers, suits, and printed city-boy ties—into casual, modern clothing and accessories worthy of a hang-out session that just happens to take place on a private jet.