The fitting room at 24 Faubourg Saint-Honoré runs warm in August

The fitting room at 24 Faubourg Saint-Honoré runs warm in August. Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski stands beside a half-dressed mannequin, adjusting the fall of a leather skirt with her thumb and forefinger. The hem sits two centimetres below the knee. She tugs it higher, then lower, then back to its original position. A cutter watches from the corner. Vanhee-Cybulski nods once, and the garment comes off for alteration.

This is the rhythm at Hermès. Small adjustments, repeated until they stop feeling small.

Vanhee-Cybulski has been directing the women's ready-to-wear collections since 2014, a tenure that now spans a decade. She is not the face of the house—Hermès does not operate that way—but she is the hand that shapes its garments. Her work is quiet in the way a well-cut jacket is quiet: you notice the effect before you notice the technique.

Formation

She came up through Maison Martin Margiela, which tells you most of what you need to know about her instincts. Margiela in the late nineties and early 2000s was a laboratory for deconstruction, but also for precision. Seams were exposed not for spectacle but to show how a sleeve was set. Vanhee-Cybulski spent five years there, first as an assistant, then as a designer. She learned to question every convention and to rebuild only what served a purpose.

After Margiela, she moved to Céline under Phoebe Philo. If Margiela taught her to take things apart, Céline taught her to leave them alone. Philo's Céline was about restraint, about knowing when a garment was finished and walking away. Vanhee-Cybulski worked on the collections from 2006 to 2013, a period when Céline became the reference point for a certain kind of woman who wanted clothes, not costumes.

When Hermès approached her in 2014, she had no interest in reinventing the house. She has said, in various interviews, that her job is not to impose a vision but to continue a conversation that began in 1837. This is not false modesty. It is a recognition that Hermès operates on a different timescale than most fashion houses. A leather jacket introduced in her first collection is still in production. The house does not do seasonal obsolescence.

The Turn

Her first show, for Spring/Summer 2015, was met with polite applause and mild confusion. The clothes were simple: trousers with a high waist, blouses in crisp poplin, leather pieces that looked like they had been made by a saddler. Which, in some cases, they had. The palette was sand, navy, and a particular shade of terracotta that would become a signature.

Critics noted the absence of obvious newness. There were no statement sleeves, no exaggerated proportions, no viral moments. This was intentional. Vanhee-Cybulski was not interested in the fashion cycle. She was interested in the wardrobe.

By her third season, the logic became clear. Each collection built on the last, refining a set of shapes rather than replacing them. A blouson introduced in one season would reappear the next in a different weight of leather. A trouser cut would be adjusted by half an inch at the waist. The work was iterative, not declarative.

This approach aligned with Hermès's broader philosophy, which treats fashion as a subset of craft rather than the other way around. The house employs more artisans than designers. Vanhee-Cybulski works within that structure, not against it. She designs for the atelier, not for the runway.

Signature

If there is a Vanhee-Cybulski silhouette, it sits at the natural waist and skims the body without clinging. Her trousers are cut with a slight taper and a clean break at the ankle. Her jackets have a soft shoulder and a longer-than-average sleeve. The proportions are deliberate but not didactic. You can wear them with a flat shoe or a heel and the balance holds.

She uses leather the way most designers use wool. Not as an accent, but as a primary material. Hermès has the infrastructure for this—its leather goods ateliers produce more than bags—and Vanhee-Cybulski takes full advantage. A Spring 2019 collection featured perforated leather blouses that moved like cotton. A Fall 2021 show included shearling coats so light they could be worn indoors. The technical skill required to produce these garments is considerable, but the effect is casual.

Colour is handled with similar care. She works within a narrow range—earth tones, navy, occasional flashes of orange or red—but the specific shades shift each season. A brown from Fall 2020 is not the same brown as Fall 2023. The differences are subtle enough that you might not notice them on a screen, but they register in person.

This attention to detail extends to fabric. She specifies weights the way a tailor does. A summer jacket might be cut from a 7oz linen-silk blend. A winter coat from a 14oz wool-cashmere. The house works with mills that can produce cloth to these specifications, and Vanhee-Cybulski uses that access to fine-tune the hand of each garment.

What Holds

A decade is a long tenure in fashion, longer still at a house that does not chase trends. Vanhee-Cybulski has now designed more than twenty collections for Hermès, and the work has settled into a rhythm. Each season refines the last. Each piece is designed to outlast the calendar.

This is not to say the collections are static. A Fall 2023 show introduced wider trousers and longer skirts, a shift in proportion that felt significant within the context of her previous work. But the change was gradual, not abrupt. The house does not pivot. It adjusts.

What comes next is likely more of the same, which is not a criticism. Hermès does not need revolution. It needs someone who understands that a well-cut jacket is more valuable than a dozen statement pieces, and that the best clothes are the ones you stop thinking about after you put them on.

Vanhee-Cybulski understands this. She designs for the long term, for the woman who buys one piece a season and wears it until it falls apart. Which, if the garment is made properly, takes years.

The fitting room is cooler now. The leather skirt is back on the mannequin, the hem adjusted. Vanhee-Cybulski steps back, looks at it for a moment, and moves on to the next piece. There is always a next piece.