Paris fashion doyenne Nichanian bows out at Hermes after 37 years

"I'm feeling emotional, it’s my decision to stop and do something else," the 71-year-old told AFP afterwards. "It’s a decision I’ve thought through carefully because I feel it’s the right moment for me, and for the house."

The departure of the doyenne of Paris fashion adds to the upheaval at the top of the luxury clothing sector over the last 12 months, which has seen a new generation of designers promoted at brands including Chanel, Dior and Gucci.

Many of them were barely in school when Nichanian took over menswear at Hermes in 1988 with instructions from then company boss Jean-Louis Dumas to run it "like your small company".

The Paris-born designer helped transform a niche luxury brand known for its scarves and leather goods into a global fashion profit machine with sales of menswear estimated at several billion euros a year.

Her design philosophy mirrors her own discreet personality, with a focus on quality and comfort through quiet evolutions, rather than flashy re-invention.

Her final collection for Fall-Winter 2026, which included outfits inspired by her work in the 1990s and early 2000s, "underlines how Hermes clothes are timeless," she told AFP.

She will be replaced by 30-something London designer Grace Wales Bonner, founder of her own Wales Bonner label who will produce her first Hermes collection next year.

Wales Bonner, whose work draws on her father's Afro-Caribbean roots in Jamaica and British tailoring, represents a generational and stylistic shift for the classic French brand.

"Grace Wales Bonner is very modern, committed. Hermes has chosen someone who will bring not only quality, but also an image and a point of view," Marie Ottavi, a fashion journalist at France's Liberation newspaper, told AFP.

- 'Macho milieu' -

On the eve of her last show, Nichanian told the Business of Fashion website that no one at Hermes had said "you have to stop" but she had felt the need to step back due to the frenetic pace of the corporate business.

"There's so much change, it loses something magic, the something that makes people happy," she told the website about the fashion industry.

"When I talk to my friends at the different houses, they're not happy. It's not only insecurity, it's pressure."

She will remain in charge of men's accessories and silk at Hermes. 

The Armenian-origin designer started her career with Italian legend Nino Cerruti, who plucked her from her Paris fashion school, L'Ecole de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne (ESCP).

Speaking to AFP in 2014, she confided that she had had to "work harder" as a woman in "a pretty macho milieu and the men didn't expect a woman to tell them what to do." 

As well as her gradual modernising touch, she has also won fans for her attention to what she calls "selfish" details, hidden touches of luxury such as a lambskin-lined pocket.

"We women can sometimes make concessions to comfort. But men, never," she told Le Figaro newspaper in 2018. 

- KidSuper -

Elsewhere at Paris Men's Fashion Week on Saturday, celeb-favorite Kidsuper founder Colm Dillane produced one of his typically eccentric and creative runway shows.

It began with a short film directed by Dillane featuring veteran French actor Vincent Cassel as a paranoid Parisian losing his grasp on reality and ending with models sitting at cafe tables on the catwalk.

The clothes featured long faux fur coats and patterned trenches for men, or patchwork bombers, all with lavish textures in a palette of autumnal greens, browns and ochre.

Men's Fashion Week concludes Sunday with a show by Jacquemus before the start of Haute Couture Week on Monday. 

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