This is an edition of the newsletter Show Notes, in which Samuel Hine reports from the front row of the fashion world. Sign up here to get it free.
Veronique Nichanian held her first runway show for Hermès in 1988. On Saturday evening in Paris, she was preparing for her 87th, which would also be her last as artistic director of Hermès menswear. As a crowd of some 600 guests poured into the neoclassical Palais Brongniart, Nichanian was sitting in a private room with a few close members of her team. The only real indication that it was V-Day was a pin fixed to her navy sweater that read “The Last Dance.”
“I feel good,” Nichanian said. “Maybe I will cry tonight, I don’t know. But so far I’m fine!”
Nichanian, 71, announced her retirement in October, and Hermès appointed Grace Wales Bonner as her successor shortly after. Nichanian told me she could have stayed as long as she wanted. “The house and [Hermès CEO] Axel [Dumas] did not want me to stop!” she said. But she said she felt it was time to hang up the shears to fulfill a lifelong dream of living in Tokyo, where she will spend the next six months. Referring to Bonner, Nichanian said, “It’s time for another person to take men’s Hermès, and to do what she can—it’s great.”
Bonner’s debut is set for January 2027, so Saturday night was all about Nichanian. Downstairs, Travis Scott attempted to keep a low profile in a tacit acknowledgment of the evening’s true star. A guest managed to get Scott to sign a Birkin, but otherwise there wasn’t the typical swarm of photographers and selfie takers mobbing the rapper. “I’m here to see VN,” said Scott, dressed in a trim pinstripe suit. “She’s been here for 37 years, it’s crazy. I had to be here to see what’s gonna happen tonight.”
I mentioned that Nichanian is obsessed with pinstripes, and Scott smiled widely. “Exactly!” he said.
Scott’s presence speaks to Nichanian’s influence on several generations of men’s fashion obsessives. When she left Cerruti to take the job at Hermès, Ronald Reagan was president and menswear meant tailoring and ties. She pioneered what is now thought of as quiet luxury, clothes that were casual but sophisticated, made with princely fabrics and exquisite detailing. But her thing is not always quiet: she was also keen on introducing men to the pleasures of color and the necessity of a head-snapping croc leather jacket.