Leather rules again at Hermes

In Hermes’ autumn-winter 2019 collection, it’s leather, leather everywhere, and so many pieces you’d want to wear.

Creative director Nadege Vanhee-Cybulski took womenswear back to Hermes’ early roots in luxury leather goods, crafting everything from lambskin micro shorts to pencil skirts in the rock-’n’-roll fabric.

“I want to turn leather into almost a textile,” she said, and did, turning the classic hide into hot sheaths in toothsome colors: midnight black, chocolate brown, sandy beige and Hermes’ trademark burnt orange.

Biker jackets can be teamed with and tamed by office-appropriate pencil skirts. Skirts are embellished at waist with decorations inspired by equestrian browbands in fine nappa lambskin. Coats are trimmed with leather at the cuffs and collar.

But while leather was the predominant fabric, there was also silk, harking back to another Hermes icon. The long-sleeved, printed silk T-shirts bear a print “on the very first scarf I saw from Hermes, my mother’s,” says Vanhee-Cybulski — from Hermes’ Couvertures et Tenues de Jour scarf, to be exact

The handbags were an alluring mix of structured and shapeless. The Hermes H logo makes an appearance on small waist wallets in silver hardware. Thin envelope handbags look like winners in the collection, while models carried soft, roomy maxi totes in calfskin under their arms like precious babies.

Thigh-high stretch goatskin boots in frosty grays and nudes accompanied most of the collection, their sexiness balanced by the modest, below-the-knee hemlines of the pencil skirts.

On the wrist was the Galop d’Hermes watch in rose gold with a grained silvered dial and opaline center, and a strap in polished alligator.

The overall effect was modern yet timeless, proper yet rebellious at the same time, Vanhee-Cybulski paying homage to Hermes icons while bringing the house into the 21st century and the way modern women of all ages like to dress.

The creative director has talked about “classicism as a modern way of seeing life.”

In Hermes FW19, that means fashion that won’t fade away with the trends but will last as long as any artisanal work of art.

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The Hermes Manila flagship store is in Greenbelt 3, Ayala Center, Makati.