Hermès Fall Winter 2026-2027, the Second Chapter – Resort in Los Angeles. Story by Kate granger, Editor of RUNWAY MAGAZINE. Photo/Video Courtesy: Hermès.

Ah, Los Angeles. The precipice of the Pacific, the far-left edge of the continent, and the perennial land of reinvention. It is a tired cliché that one goes to California to find endless possibilities, but when a 189-year-old Parisian luxury house makes the trek, the cliché suddenly wears excellent tailoring.

High in the hills of Bel Air, Hermès unveiled the “second chapter” of its Fall-Winter 2026 collection. The resort show—poetically dubbed “Silhouettes on the Horizon”—required a custom-built, pale yellow runway erected over an open lot above the Hotel Bel Air. Reaching this aerie required a steep ride in a golf cart. One can only imagine the front row, which included Miley Cyrus, Kerry Washington, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, waiting in line for their post-show transport back down to reality.

But logistics aside, the collection itself was a triumph of liberation. Designer Nadège Vanhée delivered a much-needed departure from the somewhat confined, body-con stretch leather shapes of recent seasons. Here, dressmaking met dance. Vanhée drew upon her own childhood fixation on ballet, intertwining the strict, perfected gestures of the artisan with the fluid choreography of the dancer.

The runway offered a masterclass in narrative design. Satin dresses featured gathers and piped seams that deliberately echoed the meticulous construction of pointe shoes. Long, languid velvet dresses dripping with 1930s Hollywood glamour walked alongside spangled knit onesies in pale yellow and bright turquoise. And for the inevitable extrovert, tooled and studded leather biker jackets brought a welcome, rebellious edge.

There is a whispering among acute observers that we are witnessing the prelude to a Hermès haute couture line. Sitting 5,600 miles away from the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, this collection felt like a remarkably successful trial run. Vanhée pushed far beyond the foundational silks and leathers of the house, venturing into nips, tucks, and coquettish skirt suits that demand exceptional, couture-level craftsmanship.

As a Frederic Sanchez remix of Kim Carnes’s “Bette Davis Eyes” closed the show—prompting Miley Cyrus to sing and dance from the front row—one thing was abundantly clear: this is the freest Hermès has looked in a long time. It turns out a little California air is exactly what the atelier ordered.

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