The women’s RTW runway featured clothes that are as versatile and varied as the women who wear them.
Nadège Vanhée’s vision for Hermès Women’s Spring-Summer 2025 is a fresh turn from her much more serious Autumn-Winter 2024 lineup. While echoing the prior season’s visual concepts, she has refined them, softened the edges, and brought them more fully into the present.
Gone is the prior season’s sharp androgyny and exaggerated, referential silhouettes; instead, she brought forth a true modern feminine: confident and ready without having to be nailed down to just one aesthetic. She can be sexy, sporty, both, or neither; instead, the modern feminine is a blend of whoever she is and whatever is driving her at that moment.
Sporty Chic Meets Modern Feminity
This was emphasized by the interplay of numerous dichotomies shown on the runway: tiny hand-carried bags and oversized totes, floaty mesh and thick leather, cropped tops, cinched waists, and voluminous wrapped coats, and endless neutrals punctuated by a splash of pinks.
The themes of utility and activewear were also emphasized. There were lots of clips and zippers, design elements intended to offer the wearer the opportunity to change the shape of a piece at will (although the usefulness of this option is still TBD) or tying several individually useful pieces together.
There were also elements echoing the (dare I say ‘90s?) sexy-sporty look: boy shorts poking up over the tops of pants and skirts, accentuated with a slim belt and paired with bra tops. Additionally, the finely detailed dresses and skirts, with embroidery or with woven, stitched, or inset leather details, firmly delineated this season from the previous, more dystopian and androgynous one.
Overall—and despite the occasionally overdone use of hardware, which should probably be seen more as adornment or potential than as a useful proposition—the clothes, both individually and collectively, were wearable, and most pieces appeared easy enough to add to one’s wardrobe and to hold their own there.
Shoes on the Hermès runway are usually minimal; here, the two styles were clogs (similar to the Carlotta but with open toes and heel strap) and riding boots (think the Jumping Shorter without the Kelly Buckle).
Unpacking the Bags of Hermès SS25
Bags were featured more than usual for the Hermès runway. There were some new, summery styles, such as a woven (Osier) version of the Sabot, and the Cabas Corricolo, the Cabas Tressage, and the Panier Tressage, composed of horsehair & calfskin.
The big favorites were familiar shapes, such as the Kelly Sellier (sporting a substantial new leather strap or in So Black Box), the Victoria, the Sac Maximors, the Picotin, and the Plume. The biggest eye-catchers were, of course, the return of the JPG Birkin (this time in a smaller, 29cm size) and the Birkin à l’Envers, which is essentially a Birkin turned inside-out (which may be a bit too deconstructionist to be practical; at first it appeared to be a Birkin version of the Kelly Flat, which would have been a more useable iteration).
At the re-see, Hermès also presented the Mini Kelly Pampilles (Fringed Mini Kelly), the Sac Cliquetis, a denim Cargo Birkin, the Arçon Slim (a new version of the Arçon, but narrower and with a longer strap), the Constance Elan, the Minaudière Sanglons, and the silk Soie-Cool.
The new bag designs for Spring-Summer 2025 are Cabas Corricolo, Cabas Tressage, Minaudière Sanglons, Panier Tressage, and Sac Cliquetis.
The new versions of older bag designs for Spring Summer 2025 are: Arçon Slim, Birkin à l’Envers, Cargo Birkin (in denim), Constance Elan, JPG Birkin (29cm), Kelly Sellier, Mini Kelly Pampilles, Picotin, Plume, Sac Maximors, Sabot Osier, Soie-Cool and Victoria.
