Today is a picture-perfect mid-June afternoon in central London. Four women are gathered on a manicured rooftop, backdropped by the Georgian mansard roofs of Mayfair, sharing details about work projects and summer plans, along with hushed snippets of gossip I don’t quite catch. That’s partly intentional. Despite my journo credentials, attempts at eavesdropping up here would feel gauche. This is not just any W1 chinwag.

I’m watching a clutch of cultural luminaries atop 166 Bond Street, Hermès’s new mini-village of a store, which – aside from being an architectural behemoth comprising six interconnected five-storey townhouses, set around a spiral staircase extended by Foster + Partners – is a physical manifestation of the esteem in which the brand holds London, something Nadège Vanhée, the artistic director of womenswear since July 2014, shares. The flagship’s ribbon-cutting presented the perfect opportunity for Vanhée to connect with her London cohort: artist Rhea Dillon, architect Sumayya Vally, and composer, producer and sound artist Mimi Xu. “They all have a strong sense of determination and a very authentic voice,” says the flame-haired 48-year-old thoughtfully, holding court in an electric-blue funnel-neck knit, straight-cut indigo jeans, scarlet socks and Salomon trainers. “They are all, in their own way, quite poetic.”

Sumayya Vally, Rhea Dillon and Mimi Xu stand on the 166 Bond Street roof garden, proud in looks from Vanhée’s autumn/winter 2026 collection for Hermès that distill the designer’s creative ethos: stark, sensual, self-assured; designed with deepest care for the women they clothe, and for the highest virtues of craftsmanship. Clothes and accessories Hermès.

The open-mindedness of London, a city that has been a spiritual home to Vanhée since the mid-’90s, plays into her own poeticism (within the first minutes of our interview, we’ve covered the ancient Greek goddess Hekate as the jumping-off point for autumn/winter 2026, the collection’s central contemplation of “the fugacity of looking” and the “reconciliation of pragmatism and aesthetics” that is the kernel of her creative philosophy). After growing up in Seclin, close to the Belgian border – nourished by a diet of rock and shoegaze (think Suede’s sepia-hazed “New Generation” and My Bloody Valentine’s glitched-out, thrashy “You Made Me Realise”) – an 18-year-old Vanhée hopped on the train to London, where she headed straight to Kensington Market, the now-defunct crucible of the capital’s alternative fashion scene. There, agog at the appearances of “all of these incredible goths”, she immersed herself in “this great workshop of creativity” and frequently came back to town on commission for , a Lille-based underground rock fanzine. “I got to do some interviews,” she says of holding up a Dictaphone to Placebo’s Brian Molko – “all with my incredibly thick French accent!”

Later, during a London gap year in 1996, Vanhée’s “pretty distinct memories of the night bus” back to her Stockwell base, where the walls shook from neighbouring squat raves, incubated a keenness to peer beyond pretty veneers. This alternative vision singled her out during her fashion design degree at Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts. After graduating in 2003, she moved to Paris to complete a masters at the Institut Français de la Mode, before taking a job as part of the anonymous design team at Maison Margiela in 2005. A stint as a senior designer at Celine under Phoebe Philo from 2008 to 2011 saw Vanhée lay down roots in London once more, so that when The Row eventually came calling and she moved to New York for a three-year stretch as design director, she had the backing of British creatives following her power moves.

“Nadège has such a respect and reverence for craft, but she’s also unafraid to transcend its typical associations while keeping the thread of what it is alive,” says Sumayya Vally, who met Vanhée in 2022 through Bettina Korek, CEO of the Serpentine Galleries, and sees direct parallels between their respective practices. “What she creates really is true luxury,” adds Mimi Xu, who crossed paths with Vanhée eight years ago via mutual friends in Paris. “It’s about discipline, detail, fabrication. When I wear her clothes, I always feel empowered, but never ostentatious. There have even been looks where I think, ‘Oh my God, I could wear that to Berghain, leave in the afternoon, and then go to a gallery opening in the same outfit!’” For Rhea Dillon, who was first introduced to Vanhée’s world through the art writer and curator Francesca Gavin in 2021, the “robustness” of her Hermès designs piqued her interest: “They’re imbued with a sense of determination – of armour – that I think is owed to an almost scientific focus on materiality.”

Vanhée’s immersion in the London art world stretches back to her arrival in the city in the late 1990s, when she discovered Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas during “a moment when female vulnerability was expressed in a very brash and provocative way”. She is deeply invested in developments at the scene’s bleeding edge, as evidenced by her support of artists such as Dillon, and her patronage of blue-chip gallery Sprüth Magers (the Serpentine Gallery, the Barbican Centre and the Whitechapel Gallery are also on her tick list when in town). “You can really sense a whole new generation coming up,” she says. “We’re in a time where art doesn’t need to be decorative anymore – it has to come forth and bring new meaning.”

Her own creative pathway is taking her to Paris Couture Week, where she will present Hermès’s first collection recognised by the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode for spring/summer 2027 – an “incredible opportunity that enables a new form of expression”. It doubles down on the value that Vanhée places on Hermès’s commitment to craft (“it’s not just a branding tactic, it’s really a discipline and a tradition”) underscored by “the spirit of lightness that percolates through the house – this eccentricity” – which always leads her back to London.

As Hermès artistic director, Pierre-Alexis Dumas, said at the grand unveiling of 166, “Hermès is the most British of the French houses” – a statement first uttered by his grandfather, Robert Dumas, the man responsible for the maison’s rapid expansion in the 1950s. This sentiment was cemented that evening at its festival-scale celebration of British whimsy staged at The Hurlingham Club. There, after London Vegetable Orchestra recitals and dancing topiary hedge shows, I spot Vanhée in a lean red trouser suit at the Horse Carrot – a purpose-built Hermès pub – bopping among friends and clients to Fatboy Slim’s lock-in set. Paris may be the city she currently calls home, but Nadège is a London girl at heart.

Hair: Pål Berdahl, Masaki Kameda. Make-up: Lynsey Alexander, Fernanda Paz. Nails: Naima Coleman. Tailor: Jacky Hu. With thanks to Narcissus Studio and Ibraaz London