Menswear Maestro Mark Cho on 10 a.m. Cigars, Collecting Watches, and Dressing for ‘Casual Mode’

Nichanian is artistic director of the Hermès men’s universe, a bombastic title with a somewhat more prosaic explanation, which is that she oversees all the menswear stuff—clothes, bags, shoes, accessories and the like. But it’s how she has done this that intrigues. She’s been dressing chic Parisian males and their counterparts around the globe for 36 years and is the longest-serving creative director in fashion who doesn’t have her name above the shop. Only the Ralphs and the Giorgios have been designing in one place for longer. 

But in a sense, Nichanian has also done what they’ve done. When she was appointed by Hermès to take over its menswear division back in 1988, the brand was in the midst of a reinvention by Jean-Louis Dumas, great-great-grandson of founder Thierry Hermès, and was not the pinnacle of aspiration that it is today. Nichanian didn’t lay the foundation at Hermès, but she can claim to have built the temple of its contemporary menswear business brick by brick, starting at a time before GPS, Pretty Woman and the World Wide Web. 

She has done it with a keen understanding of what fashionable men want. “I’m so demanding when working on the clothes,” she says. “It’s not my job to make fashion and a beautiful photo,” she adds, alluding to the elaborate ad campaigns that punctuate the conversation multiple times a year at other labels. “A beautiful fashion photo does not mean beautiful clothes.” 

Every morning, on the walk to her office inside company headquarters, Nichanian passes glassed-in workshops through which she can see artisans manipulating the famous Hermès leather, using tools and blades as much as machines to do so. Natural light floods the workspaces; once the light goes, I was told, the workers knock off for the day. “What I like about Hermès is it’s a house that’s very open-minded, where the craft is seen, where things are done by the hand,” she says. 

“As a designer, I’m totally free to do what I want—there’s no marketing person, nobody telling me I have to do some ties or shoes,” she continues. “At Hermès, I express a modern way for a man to dress. He likes beautiful things, beautiful material. And he understands why it’s costly. It’s not expensive—we’re not talking about price. I choose the best material, the best cashmere and the best manufacturer, and at the end of that, it’s costly. But not because I put a big logo on it. And I like this man because he understands that. He knows himself.” 

Hermès is most famous for its ornate silk scarves and handbags so scarce and desirable they can sell on the secondary market for hundreds of thousands. But certain menswear items deserve equal billing. Under Nichanian, the house’s leatherwear has become essential, and I admit to spending far more time than strictly necessary trying on a silky taupe-gray suede overshirt in the Paris store beneath its headquarters on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. The label has been lauded in these pages (it’s won multiple Best of the Best awards) for both its outerwear and bags, but the quality of fabrication of its knitwear and shirting is equally strong. 

“Hermès is a very French house,” Nichanian says. “The sophistication I have, it’s very Parisian. It’s very sophisticated how the French man puts things together. But since the beginning, it’s a casual house. I know how to do a beautiful suit, but what is very difficult is to define the way to dress casual and very chic. I don’t want to be classical or traditional, and I don’t want to be fashion at all. I want to be on the verge.” 

A pile of iconic orange Hermès boxes provides a splash of colour in a corner of her office; behind the door, on a wall, there’s a collage of photographs of famous friends: French president Emmanuel Macron; a number of young sportsmen; and a familiar face from the art world—David Hockney. “Yes, that was a big meeting,” she says with a smile. “He’s really funny. I asked him, which I never asked anybody in my life, ‘Can we make a picture together?’ When I came back, I designed a sweater and sent it to him.” The picture is of the artist, with a striped cashmere rugby shirt, looking absolutely delighted. 

For many of us, wardrobe MVPs come in navy, gray, white and black. But the Hermès man is often to be seen sporting pops of colour that add interest without overwhelming—a striped belt, say, or an accent on a collar or hem. For spring-summer ’25, which showed in Paris a few days before our conversation, Nichanian sent out a procession of complementary, youthful separates that epitomise casual chic. Short-sleeve shirts in an openwork cotton knit with contrasting collar and placket matched with roomy straight-legged pants. A cocoa blouson in a pique canvas over light-blue cotton drill trousers. Simple but elegant shirting and a number of exquisite leather jackets, one in ecru calfskin, another in a barely-there blue glacier. With Hermès, the details are all-important—the proportions of the collar, the extended shoulder that provides the drape. Easy to miss but integral to the effect. 

Nichanian prides herself on such minutiae, designed to make a statement to no one other than the wearer. “I want to make selfish clothes,” she says. “When you touch them and feel the material, you say, ‘Oh, my God’. That feeling is for you first.” She’s talking about up-close aspects such as a pocket indulgently lined with lambskin or a seemingly regular cotton-poplin shirt with the hand feel of silk. Or take the sweatshirt, shirt and T-shirt that opened this collection’s show, featuring what looked like an artist’s pencil sketch of a horse. The catch: all the garments are made of calfskin, and the lines seem almost rubberised to the touch. 

The designer’s other favourites include shirts, shorts, pants and bombers featuring Hermès’ iconic “L’Instruction du Roy” print of equestrian details and floral motifs, penned last century by designer Henri d’Origny and made famous on its silk scarves. The theme of this section was an evening beach party, and the twist was that the graphic print ran off the clothing and appeared tattooed onto the chests, arms and legs of the models. You could see it as the sartorial equivalent of the inside-outside movement in interior design, as the dialogue between the body and the clothes you wear becomes more integrated and fluid. The tattoos were temporary, of course, and Nichanian tried one herself before subjecting the models to them. “It stayed for five days,” she says, impressed. (And no, they’re not for sale.) 

She says she still gets nervous before a show, because each collection is the manifestation of a particular idea, and capturing the essence of that idea never gets easier. “The difficult point is to know when to stop—with so many ideas, you can make many different shows,” she says with a rueful smile. “So you have to say, ‘Okay, I want to say that’. And this is my starting point, and this is exactly the collection I have in my head. Sometimes I know exactly what I want to do since the beginning. But sometimes I change my mind: a week before one show, I said we’re going to change the ending. There’s not a recette, as we say in French—a recipe.”

Nichianian is 70, not that you’d guess it. Petite and elegant in a simple black-and-white outfit with funky accessories, she has a quiet intensity but eyes that smile often. She speaks English in a thick accent, with an occasional, rapid burst of her native tongue to make a larger point. 

“I said to my parents when I was 15, ‘I want to work with clothes.’ She studied at Paris’s elite École de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture, where she graduated top of her class, then joined Nino Cerruti as a stylist on his menswear line. Cerruti is credited with helping define the Italian tailoring tradition of a lighter, looser silhouette, and his take influenced many—not least Giorgio Armani, who was there in the ’60s. At Cerruti, Nichanian developed her love of tailoring and particularly of cloth, partnering with Italian mills to refine their materials to her standards. “I remember when I started working, the fabrics were so heavy and everything was so stiff,” she says. She eventually left to join Hermès, enticed by the promise that she could make menswear according to her own vision. Thirty-six years later, that vision remains. 

She has a small team of eight, some of whom have been with her for 10 or 15 years. Is she a good boss? Well, she says, she knows her team likes to work with her “because they write to me and say, ‘We don’t want to be with Hermès, we want to be with you.’ And I love that.” 

She describes the office environment as “very democratic”, despite her strong instincts. “We discuss. And sometimes I say, ‘Yes, you’re right, I was wrong. Let’s make it different.’ When I know what I want, I go straight. But when I ask my team, I follow their advice.” 

Younger members hit the clubs of the French capital, for which she’s grateful, as while she’s not interested in following trends, she does want to remain au courant. “This is not my life anymore, going to a party every night,” she says. (She prefers the cinema.) “So I say, ‘Okay, what’s going on?’ And when I travel, to Japan or New York or LA, I bring two of them each time, and it’s fun. I have the maturity. I know exactly what Hermès is because I built it for 36 years. But working together, they’re listening to me, I listen to them. The world is changing very fast, and I like that. It’s very exciting.” 

There must be a temptation to put her feet up, to spend more time with her husband at their house in the South of France? She says no. “I’m very proud to have good reviews and good sales after 36 years. So I will continue. If I’m bored—it could happen tomorrow or in 10 years—I will say, ‘Okay, let’s do something different.’ I don’t have a plan. I’m never looking back, because I think it’s sad, and I don’t have any regrets. I’m very happy in my life. As a creative person, working at Hermès is a dream—and it’s the dream of many people outside. So I’ll let you know.” 

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