About an hour before Hermès welcomed guests to its new store in Nashville, news broke in Paris that the brand’s menswear designer of 37 years, Véronique Nichanian, was retiring. I’m sure the comms team wished that Le Figaro, with whom Nichanian spoke exclusively, would have waited a few hours to publish, but there were very few people in Nashville who realized anything had happened. At the event, I nudged Axel Dumas, the brand’s sixth-generation heir and executive chairman, about the news while standing near the glassed-off handbag wall—each style, from a canvas Togo to a crocodile Kelly, shaded in with the proprietary color Rouge H. He politely changed the subject.