At the historic barracks of the Garde Républicaine, Hermès’s fittingly horse-steeped show space, the magic was in the details. Entering the darkened drill hall felt like stepping into an enchanted kingdom. As guests made their way to their seats, heels sank into a living carpet of richly fragrant moss. At either end of the room, cool blue light glowed from semi-circular apertures, an effect almost akin to standing in a Turrell Skyspace. For fall 2026, creative director Nadège Vanhee drew inspiration from Perspective (1951), one of the maison’s most iconic and collectible silk scarf designs by A. M. Cassandre, the celebrated modernist graphic designer and poster artist.
Cassandre’s motif, depicting an enigmatic architectural structure that extends toward a vanishing point and frames a window onto the sky, threaded through the collection, appearing on classic carrés worn as capes or loosely knotted at the shoulders as well as on quilted gilets, bombers, and shirt jackets. The graphic was scaled, mirrored, and rotated, multiplying the geometric pattern ad infinitum. Stylized clouds and sky elements wrapped around the body, and as the models strode down the runway, the diagonals and receding lines appeared to shift with each step—a visual mise en abyme that played on perspective itself.
Even in solid-color pieces, Vanhee stuck to her geometric précis with razor-sharp cuts. Leggy A-line miniskirts and jodhpurs were worn with cuissard boots that scaled the thighs, drawing the eye upward, while diagonal zippers bisected dresses and jackets. Tonal ensembles paired contrasting textures such as shearling, ostrich, mohair, and smooth leather to create subtle surface depth. Some of the most striking looks relied on saturated color and layered transparency: a biker-inspired, asymmetric dress in glossy, inky-blue leather opened at the front to reveal a lighter blue underlayer, while oxblood skirts and dresses were paired with sheer tonal tights that created a shifting interplay of color and light.
