Design
Imbuing a lasting human touch to each and every piece is the hallmark of Hermès. Kissa Castañeda speaks to artistic director Pierre-alexis Dumas on the French maison’s creative traditions and how its collections spark joy in the modern home
Hermès’ Pierre-alexis Dumas on how its collections spark joy in the modern home
It was only a few hours before Hermès revealed its new home collection at Milan Design Week and I was speaking to Pierre-alexis Dumas, a sixthgeneration member of the family who founded the maison, about the genius of Italian design icon Gio Ponti. “Can you believe there hasn’t been any major exhibition on his work in Paris,” exclaimed Dumas, who apart from being the long-time artistic director of Hermès is currently serving as chairman of Musée des Arts Décoratifs. “We’re really excited to bring Ponti’s work to the city at the end of the year,” he said, referring to the landmark exhibition he is spearheading, scheduled to open in October. Dumas’ enthusiasm when he speaks about design is infectious. Whether it is his effusive admiration for Ponti or his perceptible pride for the current Hermès home collection, it is very clear how much design means to him personally. I suppose this isn’t all that surprising. Being part of the Hermès family, he grew up surrounded by beauty and craftsmanship, and was especially influenced by his mother Rena Dumas who ran her own architecture and design practice. In fact, it was Rena who helped pave the way of the brand’s solid home offering. She co-designed the wildly successful Pippa line for Hermès—a series of easy-to-move furniture en encapsulating the idea ““moving with elegance” — —released in the 1980s.
SOLID S GROUND
A staunch advocate of the arts and a prolific collector, Dumas’ passion for the subject and his unparalleled insight put him in the privileged position to lead as artistic director. It has been over two decades since he took on this “challenge” as he called it, and during his tenure the brand has experienced a remarkable growth. He noted that he is now entering a unique time. “The first years were about learning and assimilating, then came the time to establish my imprint. I am in a transmission phase now, sharing everything I know about our culture, heritage and way of creation.” Overseeing the development of each and every product line is certainly not for the faint-hearted. And although other brands have risen and fallen in the court of public opinion (especially in the fickle world of social media), Hermès is a bastion for consistency—able to transcend trends and sustain its draw across generations of discerning consumers. Dumas credited this to several factors including the adherence to proper creative flow, which to this day is sacrosanct. Since its founding in 1837, the creative process has remained the same in the French maison. “Although the means of communication might give the impression of an acceleration, there’s a minimum amount of time you have to go through—starting with an intuition and idea, then progressing to drafting, prototyping, production and finally the finished product,” he explained. Given the luxury of time, his team is given the necessary room to imagine. Dumas encourages ideas to flourish and mature before they are transformed into something tangible. And even though we are firmly in the digital realm, the most important element at Hermès is still the
human touch. The craftsmen are at the centre of everything they do, for good reason. “One’s experience of beauty is intrinsic to human craft,” Dumas stressed. “For us, it’s always been a dialogue between the designer and the craftsmen.”
IT TAKES A VILLAGE
For the home metier, Hermès works with a handful of design collaborators and specialist craftsmen from all over the world, including expert bamboo artisans in Japan as well as lacquer studios in Vietnam. While the process and production behind every piece is rigorous, for Dumas, finding the right designers to work with has often been a matter of chance. “I believe in serendipity. Like attracts like, and that’s how most of our collaborations have begun,” he shared citing Nigel Peake as an example. The house worked with the Irish artist and illustrator on several projects. While creativity has no boundaries at Hermès, there is a limitation that it respects, which is that of the materials. The home collection is made using myriad materials such as wood, leather, bronze, and more—both the designers and craftsmen are committed to honour the distinct quality of each material employed. “Humility is important. Nature has its own law, we need to listen to the material and work with it. Try to force it and it will collapse.” Restraint is another important ingredient in the creative process of Hermès, seen in the design as well as the scale of the home métier. “We create essential objects—not everything—as they have to be special,” he said. Unlike other brands storming the interior universe with complete ranges, the Hermès 2018/19 home collection is a careful selection of wallpaper, tableware and furniture, envisioned as pieces that add happiness as well as serve as functional art.
HEART OF THE HOME
Hermès has presented its home collection during Milan Design Week since 2011, and through the years, the brand’s showcase has become a must-see for design lovers of all stripes. The Salone del Mobile fair in April welcomed 434,509 attendees from 188 countries, marking an annual increase that signals the growth potential of this sector. This is something that Hermès knew all along. Its journey began with the partnership with iconic French designer Jean-michel Frank in the 1920s, to its gradual expansion into interior textiles, wallpaper and tableware, to the solidifying of its home department when it started exhibiting in Milan. “I see Hermès as a beautiful garden with various plants, flowers and trees growing harmoniously together. The home metier is a big tree, perhaps a Scandinavian maple or an oak, that was planted before and is now garnering more attention,” said Dumas. The Hermès , the Colorist installation at this year’s fair was especially poignant. It took a month to construct the imposing setting for the week-long showcase in the Museo della Permanente. Monolithic structures rendered in mesmerising hues of berry, aqua, seafoam green were built using 150,000 zellige tiles handmade in Morocco—softening the rigid architecture with the human touch. The investment in projects like this shows the lengths to which Hermès will go in order to communicate its vision. In an era when every facet of life is dictated by how fast we go, one remembers that true luxury is time. Time to create, time to enjoy, and time to dream.