TIME HONOURED Hermès’s new fine jewellery range explores concepts and perceptions of time.
Hermès’s new fine jewellery range explores concepts and perceptions of time.
Just days after the launch in Paris of Hermès’s latest haute bijouterie collection, Continuum, which marks Pierre Hardy’s 15-year anniversary with the house, Hermès announced its minority stake in the designer’s eponymous accessory brand.
Hardy currently oversees both Hermès’s jewellery and footwear collections: the acquisition signposted a further commitment to consolidate these ties. And so it was with these milestones on the horizon that the designer chose the notion of time for his latest high jewellery collection.
“At the beginning we thought about watches or objects that count time,” Hardy explains of the new series, which spans three temporal concepts. “Then working on the subject step by step, the jewellery is exactly the contrary to mechanics; it is something that is much more evanescent, much more virtual in the way it can make you feel about time.”
His glittering Feux du Ciel set explores the radiating hues of a dawn sunrise in multicoloured gemstones. The idea was born from a photography series that Hardy came across on social media. “I tried to evoke this feeling of time as always the same, and yet never the same,” he says.
For Ombres et Lumière he pondered the passing of moments, working with hourglass shapes set with giant grey and white pearls in gradating hues, which for him also represented a contemporary spin on a rosary. “It is something that you can do to pass time, just like a meditation.” Does he meditate? “Working is my type of meditation,” he replies. The final grouping, Attelage Céleste, references sundials and toys with negative space.
In addition to these high-jewellery sets, Hardy has also recast house icons for its new silver series. “It was about putting energy into classics, and modern energy means movement – twisting, stretching and distorting,” he says of the contorted links of the Chaîne d’ancre punk necklace.
“My job is to propose something that is a little bit twisted from this standard, a new proportion, a new balance,” he concludes. Hermès may be approaching its third centenary, but for Hardy it’s always about furthering the house’s creative momentum.