Hermès veteran Véronique Nichanian’s final menswear collection is an ode to longevity

Fashion is not a dignified business. It is messy, constantly changing and prone to disposability — of ideas, trends and especially people.

So it was heartening to see a fashion house celebrate, with pitch-perfect dignity, the departure of one of its longtime designers at Paris Men’s Fashion Week on Saturday night. Véronique Nichanian, who for almost four decades oversaw men’s clothing at Hermès, marked her final outing with a show that provided a rare moment of elegance in a tumultuous fashion business, and a collection that underscored how this ultra lowkey designer has created a pragmatic lavishness that countless contemporaries have copied in vain.

Nichanian revealed in October that she would depart the French luxury house after 38 years. A respectful few days later, Hermès announced the 71-year-old’s successor: Grace Wales Bonner, the British millennial darling whose quiet intelligence has helped her build a small empire on sophisticated, self-assured clothes.

Such a seamless, peaceful transition of power is wincingly rare in fashion, and stands out against the wider industry mood. Over the past year and a half, in what some have called the “great fashion reset,” designers have been swapped, chopped, substituted for one another and dismissed with seemingly little humanity or under outrageous pressure. An unsettled air now hangs over fashion weeks and flagship stores, where there should be excitement about new ideas. If anyone can leave at any time, or brands change their identity at the drop of a CEO’s hat, how do you know what you’re buying into when you purchase a handbag or coat? What does it all stand for, aside from a ruthlessness that, while certainly glamorous, feels so ambivalent?