Paris – The luxury brand Hermès invited people to enter its creative process on Saturday, imagining a workshop setting during a Paris Fashion Week show briefly disrupted by defenders of the animal cause.
Three people protesting against the use of wild animal skins stood up to hold signs reading “Hermès stop the use of exotic skins”, before being evacuated.
The brand, a specialist in rare skins and precious leathers, questioned by AFP, did not react.
The parade took place in the Republican Guard barracks, transformed for the occasion into the Hermès workshops.
“I live in the workshop every day,” exclaimed the artistic director of the women’s collections, Nadège Vanhée-Cybulski, at the end of the show, explaining the choice of this theme for this spring-summer 2025 presentation.
The locker room was in warm tones, earth, ocher, beige. And since luxury is in the details, the classic three-quarter length fur coat has an asymmetrical cut and closes with wide lapels.
The Birkin bag, one of the house’s flagship creations, appears upside down, as if its manufacturing process had been interrupted.
An ebony brown apron dress arrives, enhanced with organdy stripes. Note: a desire for harmony, with matching colors between the tops and bottoms, like suits, to make you want to buy both pieces.
At Vivienne Westwood, Andreas Kronthaler signed a women’s collection on Saturday which moves away from certain references of the irreverent British brand, such as the tartan print, to offer a more classic style.
“Recalibrate”: under this slogan, graffitied on the large windows of the gymnasium where the parade was held, Mr. Kronthaler chose to open a silhouette in a long beige dress with a plunging neckline, with a thick chain around the neck.
The bodices are in flowing gauze, dark red version, asphalt gray, with just a touch of this famous tartan on the collar.
“Adjust, measure, rethink…” explains in the show notes the designer of Austrian origin, who lost Vivienne Westwood, his wife and mentor, in December 2022.
The goal is to show a woman who is “ultra-feminine and quite elegant in the most classic way,” he adds.
“The collection had to be light, airy and refined. Just a flash of red and pink. No prints, very fine fabrics, quality clothes, sometimes washed and worn,” concludes the house. (AFP)
