Profile in Style explores the influences, references and fascinations that have shaped creative people.
According to Nadège Vanhée, the artistic director of women’s wear at Hermès, rock stars were her first brush with the fashion world. “Music was really instrumental for me,” says the designer, 46. “I’m from a provincial town in northern France; we didn’t have [much] exposure to culture.” As a teenager in the mid-1990s, she’d attend concerts by British and American acts like Moloko and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. “I’d go to flea markets to create looks [to wear to the shows],” she says, including, once, a black crepe dress layered over leather pants and worn with moccasins. But they were more than just outfits, she now knows: “I was really creating my identity.”
Vanhée was born to an Algerian mother and a French father in Seclin, a town of about 13,000 people near the Belgian border. When she was a child, she says, her parents were more concerned with her education than with creative pursuits. “They were much more rational,” she says. After graduating in 2003 from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, she worked at Maison Martin Margiela and under Phoebe Philo at Celine. In 2011, Vanhée relocated to New York when she was hired as the design director at the Row, where she stayed until Hermès came calling in 2014. Her role at the luxury fashion house, she says, involves being an interpreter of the historic brand’s codes — equestrian iconography, artisanal leatherwork — which she marries with her own varied interests: pioneers of modern dance like Pina Bausch and Trisha Brown and rock bands such as the Smiths.
Her fall 2024 collection for Hermès, which she calls the Rider, incorporated turtlenecks with rows of metal rivets inspired by motorcycle jackets, tightly belted burgundy trenches and ultra-high-waisted riding pants — all in leather. “It was about how I could make androgyny look sexy,” she says. “Hermès has existed for six generations, but there’s space to develop a vision for that heritage. It’s my job to connect the ideas of tradition and contemporaneity.”
At top: “I started in fashion quite early. I had a lot of determination; this career wasn’t a beautiful present wrapped under a tree. It’s something I had to convince everyone in my family — and myself — I could do. Economically, being a fashion designer was like being a painter [to them]. But I was really attracted to the artistic, expressive dimension.”
Left: “The first John Waters movie I saw, in my early 20s, was 1998’s ‘Pecker’ [about a photographer from Baltimore who makes it big in the New York art world]. I felt a strong sense of endearment toward him. He showed an America of misfits, and I was very attracted to that.”
Center: “I love looking at trees — not that I’m a yoga mama. I just think they’re very resilient. They find their way to the light and have a strong compulsion to be alive. I took this picture on a walk in Picardy, a region of northern France. There’re lots of beautiful forests, and it’s not far from Paris. I usually go with a friend, and we have long conversations.”
Right: “I always go to Rose Kitchen [the chef Rose Chalalai Singh’s private dining space in Paris] for tea, and she and I just talk about life. There’s a long dining table and an open kitchen in the back. It’s an interesting intersection between private and public. Rose’s son is also good at cooking. He made me and my daughter dim sum. The fact that Rose taught him a recipe and he showed it to my daughter — that was quite special.”
Left: “The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp exposed me to the uncertainties of life. I learned a lot about managing stress and pressure. But at the same time, it’s where I discovered experimentation — and all the doubts, curiosities and ideas [that come with it]. It was a very important moment in my life. We studied draping and drawing, of course, but also art history, sociology, anthropology, architecture and photography. Linda Loppa [the head of the fashion department at the time] wanted to extract our core selves. That’s why so many strong creatives have come out of that school.”
Right: “I was basically photobombing this picture, which was taken around 1998, when I was an intern for [the London-born fashion designer] Andre Walker. You can see from the bags under my eyes that we’d been pulling an all-nighter. I felt really in my element. I love the fantasy of Andre’s work. He’s always having fun and exploring.”
Left: “This is the mood board at [the Hermès offices in] Pantin, right outside Paris. There are pictures of fittings and a work by the artist Georgia O’Keeffe. There’s a picture of a [diamond-shaped silk] Losange — an Hermès scarf I’m obsessed with. But lately, I’m not sure about mood boards. After the pandemic, it felt like there was a profusion of images. It was hard to know who did what or where it was coming from. For the fall 2024 collection, it started with my own motorcycle jacket and Lucian Freud portraits.”
Center: “[The fall 2024 runway show in Manhattan this past June] was a special celebration because it was our first show ever outside of Paris. [I was so inspired by New York’s] music, literature and art; I wanted to reconnect with it. The concept was assertive femininity, and the palette was a tribute to the Rocabar [a striped wool blanket inspired by 19th-century horse covers]. It’s part of the patrimony of the house. I didn’t have a favorite look, though. I never do.”
Right: “Gerda Scheepers is a South African artist I met when we were maybe 19 or 20. I love the way the colors are deployed throughout the canvas. She doesn’t like to be literal, but her work is often about people she’s cared about in her life. This curious painting is flirting with both abstraction and figuration. I like it when art challenges my perception of an object.”
Left: “This is a rendering of a bridge designed by Sumayya Vally, an architect from South Africa. Optimism and empathy are important aspects of her work. I love the symbolism of the bridge. It’s about immigration, in a way, and about allowing people to cross obstacles. It’s functional, but there’s a lot of poetry. It’s being built in Vilvoorde, Belgium, less than an hour by car from the Royal Academy. I can’t wait to go.”
Right: “Chantal Akerman was quite a special filmmaker. Her 1983 documentary, ‘One Day Pina Asked … ,’ about the choreographer Pina Bausch, is so touching. I specifically love this dancing scene of a choreographed kiss. You start with [a woman in] a red dress and [a man in] a black suit turning around each other like the hands of a clock. There’s very little movement, they just turn. It’s about life and death, everything and nothing.”
Left: “My mother introduced me to the music of the Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum. I recently learned that when [Kulthum] was young, she had to disguise herself as a boy to sing. She had talent but was in a very restrictive place for women. I don’t understand all of the words in Arabic, so it’s like this mysterious haze.”
Center: “This is from the spring 2021 look book, which we created when everyone was in lockdown. It was a moment when bodies weren’t shown. You couldn’t hug or hold hands. At a time when we were so remote, I wanted to bring sensuality back. I find knitwear very soothing — and the back is quite fetishized in fashion. This dress comes from the shape of the saddle [the first item produced by Hermès in 1837]. I find this shot by [the photographer] Sam Rock more expressive than a runway show, where you can only really see a garment from the front.”
Right: “I bought this vase by the American artist Luisa Maisel from a Paris gallery called Hors-Séries. I love the fact that it’s in its natural, rough state. I use it as a vase sometimes,and sometimes as a sculpture. Right now, it’s in my living room holding flowers.”
This interview has been edited and condensed.
The post A Designer Inspired by Rock Music, the Architecture of Bridges and John Waters appeared first on New York Times.