Inside The Hermès Show That Drew Miley Cyrus – And Countless Ultra-Rare Birkins – To The Hills Of Bel Air (original) (raw)

Hermès has always been the sort of house to do things its own way. Not out of rebellion, stubbornness or insubordination, but rather from a place of quietly assured confidence. Case in point? The show it staged last night in Los Angeles – an immaculately refined spectacle that you might, understandably, be tempted to group with the glut of cruise shows sweeping through the US this season. The thing is, though, this was no cruise show. Rather than a self-contained, commercially minded offering in which the backdrop does the heavy lifting, it was a continuation of the house's autumn/winter 2026 womenswear collection, the first chapter of which debuted in Paris during fashion week back in March.

“It’s the nemesis to the first, in a way!” Nadège Vanhée, the woman who has sat in the Hermès womenswear saddle since 2014, says backstage after the show, highlighting the shared tenets of the two collections and, perhaps more crucially, their differences.

Max Farago.

Max Farago.

That may seem like a needlessly fiddly semantic nuance, but it’s this distinction that underscores the self-determination and autonomous direction that define her creative vision. Nadège is, after all, a designer who has earned a reputation for both her relative understatement and the might of her influence – an architect of the luxury sensibility denoted by the now somewhat maligned term “quiet luxury” (long before it was called that, mind) both through her work at Hermès and in her prior role as design director at The Row. Rather than coming across as affectatious or haughty, though, her work has always been guided by a no-nonsense understanding of what women of refined inclinations need from their clothing – informed by astute cultural acumen, an exacting appreciation for execution of an eye-wateringly high calibre, and a yen for platforming the very best in craftsmanship.

Max Farago.

Max Farago.

These qualities were succinctly distilled in a lemon-fondant pavilion, purpose-built atop a craggy bluff in Bel Air, one of the City of Angels’ most heavenly districts. Bathed in the warm light of the gloaming, an intergenerational and interdisciplinary cast of creative mavericks – Miley Cyrus, Keke Palmer, Kerry Washington, Natasha Lyonne and Precious Okoyomon – congregated for Vanhée’s latest act. Their presence was particularly noteworthy given that Hermès is not a house that employs ambassadors in the traditional sense – they were there out of genuine admiration for the designer’s work rather than contractual obligation.

If part one of the autumn/winter 2026 collection explored the liminality of twilight – an investigation into the haziness of “perception, the clair-obscur and what isn’t necessarily visible”, as Vanhée put it – this collection offered a rather more concrete, embodied contemplation, revelling in the rigour of construction and the measured fluidity of drape, while taking the archetypal dancer’s wardrobe as a point of departure.

Rather than pay literal homage, Vanhée drew inspiration from both the compositions and affective qualities of particular garments. The inherent juxtaposition of delicate purity and rigour that, say, a ballet slipper embodies served as a mood, one that pronounced itself through pairings of hard-edged, glossy leather coats with blunt, clinking hardware and slick, nightshadow silk-velvet gowns that moved with a liquid drape; sequinned jumpsuits that skimmed the figure before kicking out into iridescent flares; and carapace-like leather vest tops with flounced peplum waists. It also served as a literal construction motif, as seen in some of the collection’s signature dresses: sleeveless bustier styles with convex skirts that swelled out from the lower chest, the powdery sheen of their jewel-toned silk taffeta and dimensional darting echoing the form and feel of a principal dancer’s pointe shoe. Despite their dainty appearance, however, they are built for rigorous wear.

Max Farago.

Max Farago.

Elsewhere, dance served as more of an allegorical framework – a context that invited reflection on the medium’s parallels with craftsmanship, and their shared exigencies of “discipline, repetition, pushing at what’s possible, repeating, failing, starting again,” as Vanhée says, in the pursuit of constant refinement. Where this was most strongly felt was in the notable focus on resplendent, swooning gowns – the sort that faintly recalled Pina Bausch’s nightwalker dresses (albeit more in their sense of movement than in their cut) – territory for which Hermès is not necessarily a byword. “I really wanted to excel in the dressmaking for this second chapter,” Vanhée added, an objective well achieved by swishing, slashed velvet gowns puckered with carré graphic smocking and scintillating embroideries, their ethereal flou counterposed by stern tailoring: pebbled pastel-hide car coats, waxy black leather trenches with jutting waists and subtly notched lapels, coral silk-wool wrap blazers with cache-cœur ties, and sumptuously bulky shearling coats with shawl collars, all styled with the insouciant air of a dancer throwing a jacket over a costume in the rush between the studio and the subway.

Max Farago.

Max Farago.

Vanhée, of course, is by no means the first designer to draw inspiration from dance – nor will she be the last. What made her grappling with such a perennially referenced creative medium feel so compelling, though, was the way she took a simultaneously literal and abstract tack, drawing upon both the sartorial materiality of dance and the curious contrasts that govern it as a medium. It was part of a strategy to strike a balance between “reality and dream”, she said, an observation that felt particularly apt as I re-entered the show space following our conversation. The Battenberg-yellow hilltop pavilion had now been transformed into a jovial after-party venue, the sun’s last rays catching the hardware of gasp-inducingly rare Kellys, Constances and Birkins nestled in the crooks of hundreds of arms. Looking at their owners, you immediately gleaned a sense of how centrally the wants and needs of real, modern women – no matter how complex – form the bedrock of Vanhée’s practice. And then, up pumped the music and the dancing began.