It's a man's world

The froufrou in menswear is the lunatic fringe, the real money's in tailoring. Meet the woman who has masterminded Hermes' success

The froufrou in menswear is the lunatic fringe, the real money is in tailoring. Meet the woman who has masterminded Hermes' success for 20 years

Veronique Nichanian has been designing the menswear collections for French luxury goods company Hermes for 20 years, a lifetime in the fashion business. Yet she remains, outside of the fashion cognoscenti, relatively unknown. Unlike her counterpart in the women’s division, Jean Paul Gaultier, who joined the company in 2004 to design the women’s collections, she hasn’t made a career out of shocking people each season and is not a celebrity in her own right. Nor does she have her own label, stand-alone boutiques or beauty and fragrance products helping to
make her a household name. She’s that rarest of things in the fashion world: a genuinely quiet achiever.

It doesn’t help matters that it’s women’s fashion that grabs the headlines and that the female models who display the clothes are the ones who become superstars (modelling is one of the few jobs where women earn more than men). So it follows that the designers of women’s fashion become the celebrities. In talking to Nichanian, however, you get the feeling that none of this seems to bother her. She’s entirely happy with her job and her position within the fashion universe. “After 20 years of doing this I’m still very passionate because there are still so many things to do,” she says. “I have had many proposals to design women’s fashion and each time I’ve said: ‘No, no. I’m still very happy.’ When you’re happy doing something the time goes very fast. If I ever stop designing men’s fashion I think I will design objects or furniture, but not women’s fashion. I don’t like froufrou or excessiveness.”

Traditionally, men’s fashion has been the poor relation in many of the luxury houses, albeit often a profitable one. The contribution of the Dior Homme range to the parent company’s bottom line, for example, pales in comparison to the might of the Christian Dior women’s line. And it’s a similar story with other brands, such as Yves Saint Laurent, Lanvin and Balenciaga. But it’s not the case at Hermes. According to the US fashion industry paper Women’s Wear Daily, menswear accounts for 45 per cent of Hermes ready-to-wear sales, thanks to recent annual gains of 10–15 per cent.  Nichanian has made Hermes’ menswear such a force because, as she says in a typically French way, she doesn’t do fashion. “I want to create style, not to do fashion and to do something different each season from the season before,” she says. “And not to talk, in a fashion way, about a total head-to-toe look.” Just don’t describe her design sensibility at Hermes as classic. “Many people think that Hermes is classic but, for me, that doesn’t mean anything. For me, classic is when you do the same thing all the time and this is not the purpose at Hermes. What I say is that we are not classic and we are not fashion, rather we are somewhere in between.”

However, she acknowledges that there is a growing number of men interested in fashion, in following trends and in changing their look every six months. “I like the possibility for a man to choose exactly what he wants today,” she says. “Twenty years ago menswear was definitely more classic and there was less choice and now there are a lot of new designers who are very good and do a great job. It might not be my taste but I recognise they focus on a particular kind of man. I like the way that all the possibilities exist now. When I started it was a big time for Italian men’s fashion, which was basically a codified version of English fashion. But now I think the French, the Japanese and the Belgians are very strong in men’s fashion.”

Nichanian was born in Paris and studied fashion design at the Ecole de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. After graduating she went to work for menswear designer Nino Cerruti as his assistant. At the time, she thought it would be good experience and that she would design menswear for one or two years and then return to women’s fashion. “I was 20 years old and I was going into the factories and learning about fashion and about fabrics, so it was very interesting,” she says.

Then, after a few years with Cerruti, like something out of a Hollywood movie, she got a call from Jean-Louis Dumas, the owner of Hermes. “I was really surprised because I didn’t think he would know me because I was Nino Cerruti’s assistant. We met, we talked about life and I told him I was very happy at Cerruti and that I was not a career woman. But meeting this man was like a revelation; he’s a man with a vision and he’s just so extraordinary. And so after meeting him I said, yes, I want to work with this man at Hermes.” A few days later Dumas called again and offered Nichanian the menswear job and gave her carte blanche. “It’s a dream when you’re a designer and you work for a company like Hermes and the owner says to you, ‘Do exactly what you want’.”

Nichanian’s strategy with the collection was to create clothes as if they were beautiful objects and not to design with a particular man in mind but to design clothes for all types of men and for the clothes, in a certain sense, to take on the personality of the wearer. “The point with the clothes
I design at Hermes is not that you wear something and it’s from Hermes and you will be so chic and fashionable,” she says. “The point is when a man chooses a sweater or a jacket, it’s his own choice and the item becomes part of his own life, it becomes his garment. Once a man said to me: ‘I thought when you designed this jacket you really knew me.’ And to me it was a great compliment, because it was exactly the jacket he wanted.”

Nichanian’s designs for Hermes are far from ordinary. There is a certain sensuality in her clothes. A cashmere pea coat, for example, might look like any other – except, of course, that it’s made from cashmere – but Nichanian often works in small details that only the wearer will discover, such as calfskin-lined pockets.

When showing the collection on the runway she often contrasts heavy fabrics with lighter ones or mixes striking pinks, greens and yellows with more sombre colours. Whereas many fashion designers create clothes purely for the runway in order to grab the attention of photographers and stylists, everything on the runway at a Hermes menswear show will appear in the stores. As if to reinforce the idea that these are real clothes for real men, Nichanian often mixes models with non-models in her fashion shows.

It’s a strategy that makes sense when you consider that menswear is a notoriously tough business and success – financial rather than critical – usually comes at the conservative end: that is, in tailoring (or suits). The froufrou in men’s fashion is the lunatic fringe of the industry, the tailoring is its bread and butter. One of the more successful menswear launches in recent years has been an eponymous label by former Gucci designer Tom Ford. His signature look? A rather traditional three-piece suit. But perhaps in these tough economic times it is not a bad idea to adopt a more conservative outlook, not just in business terms but in a design sense as well.

Demand for luxury goods is expected to drop by three to seven per cent this year, according to analysts Bain & Company. It’s the first time the sector has recorded an annual sales decrease since Bain began tracking it in the early 1990s. To buffer themselves against a customer base feeling uneasy about spending, many fashion brands are expected to make a move back to basics, just as they did post-September 11, 2001. Expect to see more black, more tailoring, more classic, wearable clothes on the runways – the logic being that customers might be more willing to buy a designer label if they can wear it for a few seasons rather than something so identifiably from one season. Within the luxury sector it is thought that customers for both men’s and women’s fashion will become more selective with their purchases and opt for quality and value for money over a short-lived look.

Late last year the CEO of Hermes, Patrick Thomas, issued a warning to the market that he expected the company’s full-year growth for 2008 to be lower than expected. In a statement he said, “We see a general sales slowdown in all countries. The toughest period will be between now and Christmas.” His carefully chosen words sent shockwaves through the luxury goods sector as Hermes has often been regarded as one of the more resilient luxury brands, precisely because its products are so expensive. The very rich are usually immune to economic downturns.

Another reason Hermes has often been seen as recession-proof is precisely because its products have always been designed and manufactured with quality in mind and with the intention that they will last for years. There’s a mantra at Hermes that is repeated from management and creative types alike and it speaks volumes in its directness but also in its semantic ambiguity. “At Hermes,” the saying goes, “our products are not expensive, they are costly.” Nichanian said it in our interview and it was later repeated by the company’s deputy general director, Guillaume de Seynes, who attributed it to his grandfather, Robert Dumas, chairman of the company for 25 years.

Basically what it means is that while Hermes products might cost more they’re built to last. Buying a Hermes product is a bit like buying an expensive item of furniture: if you spend a bit more and buy wisely it should last you most of your life. De Seynes explains further: “It means that we calculate our price based on what we have to pay for the leather we buy, what we have to pay our craftsmen, what we have to pay for the rents of our stores and what margin we need to make. At the end, that’s our price. So the price at the end always reflects the reality of the cost and that’s always been our approach.”

It remains to be seen what the full impact of the global financial crisis will have on luxury goods but Hermes appears to be one of the companies well placed to ride out the storm, not only because of the products it creates but because of a lesson the company learned the hard way. In 1928 Hermes opened its first store outside France in New York, as part of a strategy to turn it into a global brand, says de Seynes. The company borrowed heavily to do it; the store closed after a year and the company was plunged into debt, its future in jeopardy. “Since that experience we have never wanted to borrow money from the bank and we have always self-funded our development,” he says.

In fashion, however, the notion of a product that lasts and can be worn for several seasons is a bit of a paradox. Nevertheless, de Seynes insists that it is an essential element in the design of any Hermes product. “An Hermes bag will last 30, 40, 50 years,” he says. It’s a peculiarity of the brand that helps to explain its appeal for men. As cliches go, it’s something of a truism that men tend to be more practical when they shop for clothes. They tend to eschew trends and gravitate towards clothes that will last, that are just like something they bought before, that are not “fashion” but make them feel good about themselves. “At Hermes,” says Nichanian, “we like to say that, with time things are better and better.”