Le Monde d’Hermès 86 Magazine SS-2025 in Lisbon, Lensed by Osma Harvilahti
/
Hermès’ creative director of women's ready-to-wear Nadège Vanhée expressed a not-often used phrase to describe her approach to the Spring 2025 season: “What I want to convey as the message is the idea of an assertive sensuality,” she said. “You know, it’s about the summer, a feel-good summer, and, really, this relationship you have with your skin.”
‘Assertive sensuality’ is a phrase that could probably result in Vanhée — originally a New Yorker — getting the boot out of America’s top universities today. Anything that smacks of an ounce of feminism is verboten.
Nadège Vanhée has played a significant role in growth and evolution of the Hermès business, guiding the house on a quietly-rebellious path that transforms how the brand is perceived among modern women. It’s unfortunate that her designer brilliance is now caught up in a global tariff and trade war launched by America against the world — and especially China, where Hermès has outperformed the competition.
The success of Birkin bags is a key driver in that success. They are so successful that thieves are now tracking women who flaunt them on social media. This would be a topic of major concern, except that reports are that America and China are heading for a “monumental split”, one so serious that international trade could be upended.
“We are approaching a monumental train wreck breakup,” said Orville Schell, the Arthur Ross director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society in New York. “The fabric that we so carefully had woven together over the last several decades is ripping apart.”
As my closest friends have reminded me in recent days: “Anne, you have been a globalist to the core when the topic was China.” They’re not being critical so much, as reminding me how committed I was to building up the rest of the world.
