Hermès Menswear Exit Suggests Luxury Isn’t Just Perfect (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: The woman who designed menswear for Hermes for 38 years just showed her last collection in Paris and it made me think that the way we look at luxury today is totally wrong. Veronique Nikonian designed menswear for Hermes for 38 years which is a pretty unrivaled tenure in fashion especially in this moment when designers are changing all of the time. There are very short tenures typically at fashion houses so to have someone who is presenting a body of work across a number of seasons and decades and creating clothing that is compelling to customers year after year and decade after decade is just incredibly rare. But what I found particularly interesting about this collection is that it wasn't really a greatest hits it was clothing for now and for life as the show notes said. And these weren't things that were quiet luxury you know it wasn't the perfect trouser, the right top coat, the ideal cashmere sweater. These were things that were beautifully designed and in some cases exciting and indulgent. So I think we tend to think of luxury today as being about quality and perfection and what Veronique showed us decade after decade is that luxury isn't about monasticism. It is not about denying yourself the pleasure of beautiful design. It is in fact about a sense of indulgence and even sumptuousness. And I think what Hermes is suggesting is that luxury today is the pursuit of something extraordinary and sumptuous and not merely perfect.