Hermès unveils the second chapter of its women’s fall-winter 2024 collection. Presented by Nadège Vanhée, Artistic Director of Women’s Ready-to-Wear, this runway show adds a new visual lexicon to the story begun in Paris in March – an ode to the pace, energy, and timeless optimism of New York City.
The collection’s key word, Rocabar, conjures a tradition of play and collaboration across cultures and languages: originally the name of a striped horse rug – a rug à barres, as a Scottish saddler once called it – it has settled, over the course of more than a century, into an iconic Hermès motif of vibrantly earthy color tones.
And those tones find their natural counterpoint in the iconic brick and stone façades of New York’s Lower East Side, where the buzzing city looks across the East River to a radiant sprawl of urban possibility.
Like the city, the collection comes to life as a mosaic of patterns, a melting pot of colors, textures, and codes. Each street, each bridge, tunnel, and skyscraper is built upon layers of history, of exchange and desire; stories and experiences flare up and dart away as regularly as a traffic light splashes its signals into the evening mist.
Likewise, the clothes and accessories unveiled here bring together a thoughtful jumble of functions, attitudes, and looks: the nautical nod of a double-breasted pea coat over the equestrian trappings of a wool knit sport jacket and a miniskirt quilted like a saddle pad. Rosette collar turtlenecks layered under lambskin overalls or a cashmere overshirt. A flash of leg between horse boots and a rugged lumber jacket, silk scarves belted around a leather jumpsuit.
Vermilion red, ginger yellow, viridian green. The jangle of bangles and bracelets. Secrets stashed in a bag, in a pair of zip-up boots, under a leather mariner’s cap. So many twists and turns, intersections and collisions, forming a novel silhouette as eclectic and free as city life itself: practical and feminine, lively and fierce, structured and audacious. The best of all worlds.
After the show, Pier 36 turns from a runway back into a party venue, hosting intimate musical performances by Rahill, Caroline Polachek, and Honey Dijon – for one night only at this exclusive address in the New York club scene.
