Nadège Vanhee, creative director of Hermès; ‘Silent luxury is marketing. We’re not silent here, we’re something more’

She’s one of the few women at the helm of a major brand and, unlike other designers, has the privilege of being able to take her time and even eschew public appearances, preferring to let the clothes speak for themselves

INEZ VAN LAMSWEERDE Y VINOODH MATADIN

Apr 08, 2024 - 10:00CEST

Nadège Vanhee (Seclin, France, 45 years old) arrives by foot at the Paris offices of Hermès, begging pardon several times for having been five minutes late. The cafe didn’t accept payments by card for her coffee and croissant, and she had to run to the ATM. She’s wearing jeans and a white t-shirt and doesn’t check her phone once — she doesn’t even use social media. You’d never guess that she is one of today’s leading fashion designers, the creative director of one of the most in-demand and exclusive classic luxury brands. In fact, few people outside the industry are familiar with her influence. She doesn’t like public exposure and luckily at Hermès, a family-run company that has always done things its own way, she doesn’t have to. “I don’t feel a lot of pressure. Or rather, I don’t feel the typical pressure. I always try to explore the boundaries between the house’s tremendous legacy, both its traditional and contemporary sides. Hermès has both; it’s more of a matter of racking my brain than feeling under pressure. Sure, I’m very demanding and never satisfied, but I don’t have to fly or land a plane, luckily,” she jokes. It’s only been two days since she presented her spring-summer collection, for which she brought to life a summer camp at which several models had a picnic: “I think we managed to capture an emotion, which was the goal. The idea of freedom, of sisterhood, of fun? In the end, it all fit with the collection,” she says, satisfied.

Twill dress embroidered with sacre de l’été motifs and palladium-finished calfskin belt.ANTONIO MINGOT

This year marks Nadège’s 10th anniversary as creative director of women’s ready-to-wear at Hermès, a tenure that has lasted for practically an eternity by fashion standards. “Here I have the privilege of taking my time, and I’ve realized that it’s like cooking, you can’t do it very quickly, or turn the head up too high. My work is very similar to knowing how to cook,” she says. And she’s perfect for the job. Nadège studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, and worked for another one of the school’s outstanding alumni, Martin Margiela, who was also a Hermès creative director from 1997 to 2003. Later, she did stints with two totems of subtle luxury: Phoebe Philo’s Céline and The Row, the Olsen sisters’ brand. Nadège laughs when the term of the moment, ‘silent luxury’, is brought up: “Marketing. Again, putting things in boxes and labelling them … and what a sad box, the saddest box of all. ‘Silent luxury’, nice. We’re not silent here. I think we’re something more,” she says.

Wool and mohair vest and long skirt with palladium-finished clasp, woven calfskin sandals with studded soles by Médor.ANTONIO MINGOT

That something more is what has made Hermès into one of the few places where innovation and subtlety are not a contradiction, where artisanal mastery is at the heart of it all. “I keep surprising myself. That’s why what I like best about the creative process, the beginning. I’m not methodical and I get a type of pleasure from asking, can I do this? Is it possible that we’ll be able to create this? And when I find the way to do it, that creates this feeling of happiness that I want to share with the rest of the world,” she says of those small (and high-end) details that at times, are not visible from merely looking at a piece, but that do separate the work from being ‘silent’: “Recently I’ve been thinking that fashion is overly obsessed with image and the media, because everything is measured in economic terms,” she says. “I’m not against numbers, obviously, but by giving them so much protagonism, we’re seeing things in a slightly sterile way. We’re losing our capacity to surprise and enjoy.”

Wool and mohair coat with palladium-finished metal clasp, asymmetrical silk knit bodysuit, wool and mohair pencil skirt; woven calfskin sandals with studded sole by Médor.ANTONIO MINGOT

Her philosophy, she says, has nothing to do with visual tricks, but rather something much more obvious, that today seems to have been largely forgotten: “Fashion exists to be carried with you and to be enjoyed, so that we feel good wearing this or that garment. It is functionality and pleasure,” she says. “The idea that there is a defined style or a trend to join is obsolete to me. I like clothes that belong to the person. Even when I see someone wearing my clothes, they’re her clothes, not mine, they are a part of her and her character. That’s why in the last runway show, there were different types of women, but in a genuine way, that didn’t grate,” she says. Despite being one of the few female creative directors at a major brand, Nadège is not sure if her gender makes her approach to her work any different: “I don’t know. If I thought in those terms, I think I would have to be justifying what I do all the time. My gender is part of my identity, but the issue is more complex, and in the end, I’m not one to say what a woman has to be or do. In any case, we women don’t have to justify ourselves, we have to do things, period, because we still have a long way to go and sometimes, you don’t have to explain.”