The HERMES PRINCIPLE

For artistic director NADÈGE VANHÉE-CYBULSKI, creating CLOTHES that are at once as CLASSIC as a Birkin and as MODERN as a crop top is much more than a BALANCING ACT. It's a raison d'être.

- LEAH CHERNIKOFF

When Nadège Vanhée-Cybulski, artistic director of Hermès's womenswear, was 19-or maybe 21; those years, she says, are a bit blurry-she put together a look she was really proud of: “I wore huge, baggy, really oversize Levi's with tiny, tiny, skinny black T-shirts," she tells me.

“I had really short, short hair, and I used to wear these white clogs." At the time, Vanhée-Cybulski was a student at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Belgium, the Antwerp fashion school renowned for producing such talents as Martin Margiela, Ann Demeulemeester, and Dries Van Noten. She describes her collegiate aesthetic back then as “sort of techno, with mystique." She was really into Britpop; as a teen in Lille in northern France, she and a friend wrote for a music zine as a way to get into shows for free.

It's hard to picture Vanhée-Cybulski, now 43, with “short, short" hair, so distinctive are her long auburn waves, porcelain complexion, and serene expression, which have on more than one occasion garnered comparisons to a Renaissance portrait. Her look when we meet-a tan cashmere coat with toggle clasps, a dark sweater, jeans, and a brown Kelly 32–is also a far cry from anything that could be characterized as “techno, with mystique.” Instead, she projects a precise and restrained cool, a quality she brings to the runway.

Vanhée-Cybulski got the top job at Hermès in 2014, following the departure of her predecessor, Christophe Lemaire. Her appointment was then-new executive chairman Axel Dumas's first major move at the luxury house, and it signaled a dedication to ready-to-wear as a growth category. Eight years on, Vanhée-Cybulski's found her groove, marrying the refined quality of Hermès's craft with understated, modern designs.