HERMÈS MAISON
Dive into a world of colour with Charlotte Macaux Perelman and Alexis Fabry, the deputy artistic directors of Hermès’ home collection, and Vogue Living style editor Joseph Gardner.
Joseph Gardner: With seven incredibly tall pavilions, your installation for Design Week feels almost monumental in scale. Your use of glossy, boldly coloured tiles in particular give it this luminous, magnetic quality, like an immense jewel box. How would you describe your vision for Hermès this year?
Charlotte Macaux Perelman: Hermès has a habit of staying true to its values. This year, among all the values Hermès cherishes — which include rigour, fantasy, imagination and colour — we chose colour. We wanted to place our objects against a bright and inspiring setting. For that, we wanted materials that convey this idea of colour, materials that had to be handcrafted, so we thought of zellige tiles, which are hand-cut and hand-enamelled in Morocco.
Gardner: What was the inspiration?
Macaux Perelman: The important thing was to create a shrinelike experience where the architecture serves a twofold purpose — to present our work and be a reflection of it, and to be intimate and bring us close to the objects it enshrines.
Gardner: What is the story behind the zellige tiles?
Macaux Perelman: There are approximately 100,000 clay tiles in the installation, and each tile is processed in a very artisanal way. First, the wet clay is spread out and frames are used to cut out the tiles, which are dried on large tables in the sun and then enamelled and fired — everything happens in the open. The colour of each tile is also different and depends on whether you apply the enamel in the morning, the afternoon or the evening. You get a slightly different shade that makes the overall colour so rich and deep. This all makes each zellige tile unique — look at each tile closely enough and you can tell they’re not the same.
Gardner: How has this collection evolved from last year’s? Alexis Fabry: Every year in Milan, a trend seems to point to design mastery in big volumes. We decided to do the opposite and focus on the parts of the collection that have small details, such as stitches or any other gesture that will prove the accuracy in what we do. Macaux Perelman: But this approach also felt natural. With most of our time — I would say on a daily basis — we work on this sort of small scale. We will spend hours perfecting a stitch, on just the edge of a leather piece. We do spend a great deal of energy on small objects. VL Visit australia.hermes.com