At Hermès, Nadège Vanhée turns Paris twilight into a state of mind

PARIS (AP) — Guests at the Hermès fashion show in Paris on Saturday didn’t just see the fall collection. They smelled it first.

The Garde Républicaine — the grand barracks of Paris’ mounted police — had been transformed into a forest floor, carpeted in thick, damp moss that filled the air with the heady scent of humus.

In a Paris Fashion Week that still has Chanel and Louis Vuitton to come, Hermès made a case that luxury at its most persuasive doesn’t shout.

It simply changes the air in the room.

Models emerged from luminous circular openings in the walls, like figures stepping through a full moon, and walked a raised, winding catwalk above the vegetation.

It was theatrical, but never gimmicky.

The set did exactly what creative director Nadège Vanhée wanted: it knocked you off balance.

Vanhée, who has led Hermès womenswear since 2014, titled the fall-winter collection “Entre chien et loup” — the French expression for dusk, that uneasy moment when you can’t tell a dog from a wolf.

Her show notes invoked Hecate, the torch-wielding goddess of darkness, though the clothes were less mythological than muscular — precise, body-conscious, built to move.

Leather dominated. Fluid overcoats with enormous Tuscan sheepskin collars.

Zip-front mini dresses in inky blue that opened to reveal contrasting shirts beneath.

An orange ostrich-leather jumpsuit, belted at the waist, that merged biker attitude with Hermès refinement.

The house’s equestrian DNA surfaced in jodhpurs and flat-heeled riding boots, though the glossy lambskin cycling shorts paired with aviator jackets pushed the codes into harder, more urban territory.

The palette avoided the obvious.

Night, Vanhée seemed to argue, is not simply black.

Her colors shifted from sulfur yellow to oxblood red, forest green to iridescent burgundy — surfaces that caught and changed in the light like something alive.

Zips were everywhere, slicing diagonally across jackets or running the full-length of dresses — functional but also decorative, a way of suggesting that every garment could be opened up, reconfigured, made new.

Double-breasted blazers and cigarette trousers gave the collection a sharp tailored spine, while quilted silks printed with cloud-strewn skies offered a rare moment of softness.

The collection landed with quiet force.