Air becomes structure, movement and material in a collection that explores lightness through the space between skin and clothes.
“A sky in motion.” With that image, Hermès introduces a collection built around something invisible yet constantly present. Under Nadège Vanhée, ‘The Shape of Air’ turns air into a design principle, allowing garments to move, expand and shift with the body rather than simply follow its outline.
Lightness here is engineered. Openwork knits appear almost immaterial, while cords, belts and zips alter volume and create space for movement. A silk skirt opens into sculptural draping, wide trousers unzip along the leg and a silk pongee parka billows “like a parachute”. Even ultra fine calfskin is treated until it acquires “the crisp texture of paper”, reducing one of the house’s most emblematic materials to an unexpected delicacy.
Leather becomes especially expressive when fine strips are embroidered onto mesh to create a graphic lattice, a technique compared to the precision of a Japanese stencil. Solidity gives way to transparency, and craftsmanship becomes a way of making weight disappear.
The palette follows the same atmospheric logic. Misty blue dissolves into sunset orange and sunflower yellow, tracing the passage of daylight and the warmth of air against skin. The result is a collection where technical construction never feels rigid, and where function, movement and sensuality remain closely connected.
‘The Shape of Air’ ultimately gives form to what cannot be held. Air enters the clothes, changes their volume and activates their surfaces, turning absence into presence. In the words that close the collection, “the invisible becomes tangible”. 
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