Hermès women’s ready-to-wear artistic director Nadège Vanhée brought her latest creative vision to Los Angeles, where she spent time with local artists, including painter Calida Rawles, as part of her research for Hermès’s fall 2026 collection. The visit reflected Vanhée’s long-standing interest in the meeting point between art, craft, and fashion. At Rawles’s studio in South Los Angeles, she responded to the painter’s work with the eye of a fellow artist, discussing themes such as stillness, movement, time, and space, while also selecting beauty products in colors that echoed Rawles’s canvases.
Vanhée’s background helps explain her approach. Before joining Hermès, she studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, where she developed a fascination with experimentation and visual composition. Even as a young applicant who was not yet skilled at drawing, she found ways to express ideas through collage and unconventional techniques. That instinct for reinterpreting tradition has become central to her role at Hermès, a house known for luxury goods made with meticulous handcraft and premium materials.
Under Vanhée, Hermès has continued to emphasize craftsmanship as both heritage and a contemporary value. The brand, one of the world’s most valuable, is still rooted in handwork, from hand-stitched bags to garments designed to highlight texture and movement. Vanhée describes the hand as a symbol of human connection, identity, and artistry, and she sees handmade work as a way to anchor fashion in something lasting at a time when technology dominates daily life.
Los Angeles offered a natural setting for her latest collection because of its mix of glamour, individuality, and casualness. Hermès presented the second chapter of its fall 2026 collection in the city after debuting the first chapter in Paris. Vanhée said the L.A. show was inspired by the discipline of dance and the contrast between rigor and ease. The collection included pastel jumpsuits, vivid red and green dresses, and black leather looks with intricate detailing, drawing on both ballet-like softness and Hollywood drama.
Throughout her visit, Vanhée focused on artists and creative institutions rather than celebrity culture. She also visited the Charles & Ray Eames Foundation, the Venice space of video artist Doug Aitken, and the downtown gallery Vielmetter. Her impressions of Los Angeles were shaped partly by the city’s devastating wildfires, which highlighted a sense of community and mutual support among designers, architects, and artists.
The visit comes as Hermès prepares for a major expansion of Vanhée’s role: she has been placed in charge of the company’s new haute couture atelier. Although the project is still in early stages, it signals Hermès’s ambition to extend its commitment to artisanal excellence into couture. For Vanhée, couture represents the ultimate expression of handmaking, with each piece created as a one-of-a-kind work for a single client.
Even with that high-fashion future ahead, Vanhée remains drawn to humble gestures and unexpected elegance. One of her favorite Los Angeles memories was being lent a pair of glasses by a café server, a small act she described as especially chic.
