Seoul, which Nichanian describes as “so exciting in terms of creativity, in fashion and in music, in movies and in art,” is a great shopping town. When I dropped by the mainstay local luxury boutique Boontheshop, the first brands I encountered when I stepped onto the men’s floor was an elite assemblage of Miu Miu, Phoebe Philo, and The Row, speaking to just how obsessed men have become with advanced luxury basics designed by a small group of intelligent and artful women. In that field, Nichanian is an undisputed pioneer. Nichanian started at Hermès in 1988 after being courted away from a job at Cerruti by Hermès’s then-artistic director Jean-Louis Dumas, a fifth-generation member of the house’s founding family. (Mrs. Prada only launched menswear in 1995.) As the story goes, Dumas told his new hire to “Do it as you want.”
Nichanian proceeded to introduce a wardrobe that defined casual sophistication, prioritizing ease over structure and color over the serious tones of ’80s power dressing. “For me, lightness and comfort, and sexiness and sensuality, are very important,” she said. “I like to create clothes that can create emotions, that can speak to people in a very intimate way.”
“Do it as you want” guides Nichanian’s approach to Hermès menswear to this day. There’s a clear sense of playfulness in her collections, which are dream wardrobes for men of exquisite tastes, deep pockets, and curious minds. Thirty-seven years in, her vision is agile as ever. Nichanian might propose scion-worthy skinny suits one season and then pivot to louche velvet playboy garb the next, or conjure the French Riviera before gassing up her customer’s metaphorical (but also very real) jet to send them to a ranch in Aspen. As she put it, somewhat poetically: “Our feelings can change every day, and each day we can have the desire to wear other clothes.”
You could cheekily call spring 2025 Nichanian’s White Lotus collection. She had been thinking, she told me, of what men should wear to beachside dinners in the evening. “You can imagine a man who wears a look that is casual, sexy, and elegant at the same time,” she said. Her vision of vacation includes cropped trousers with leather gladiator sandals, bicep-baring knits and technical blouson vests, button-ups in baby blues and pinks with matching neckscarves, and gossamer-thin blazers latched suggestively at the throat. Perhaps because of Hermès’s history with the necktie, Nichanian takes care to frame and adorn the neck as an erogenous focal point.
“I try to express what seems right for menswear,” Nichanian said. “Each season I’m like a writer who adds a new chapter to my book.” The analog metaphor is fitting, because Nichanian, who maintains she “doesn’t exist on social media,” seems totally immune to the flattening influence of Instagram that has defined the way so many younger designers make clothes. “I don’t like the clothes that are much influenced by the fashion vogue, but I prefer the clothes that can last for a very long term,” she said. Which speaks to the most consistent throughline in her work: a dedication to the old-world craft that makes Hermès, well, Hermès, whether you’re buying a silk scarf or a chaine d’ancer bracelet or a delicate blouson made of buttery double-faced leather. (The reversible blouson is a true blue Nichanian staple, like skinny suits to Hedi Slimane or oversized bombers to Raf Simons.)
