THE INCREDIBLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING
On the eve of an extraordinary exhibition in Melbourne, Alison Veness spoke with artistic director Pierre-Alexis Dumas about the handcrafted pieces he conceives and finding lightness amid darkness.
Artistic director Pierre-Alexis Dumas on the handcrafted pieces he conceives and finding lightness amid darkness.
We are in Hermès headquarters on the Rue d’Anjou in Paris, high up in Pierre-Alexis Dumas’s office. It feels slightly mid-20th-century modern, and, somehow, very him. It is filled with light and the walls are covered with paintings of all sizes stacked, hanging, bright, absorbing and fascinating; surfaces hold drawings, objet d’art and lush books. Memories and ideas. A grand desk. A simple meeting table.
“This is my personal sanctuary at work,” he explains of his working space. “It’s more of a place where I can be me and it reminds me of the necessity of being me, and so my mind is free to give the best of myself to my work here at Hermès and not serve anything else.”
I venture that he could get lost otherwise, given the pressure of his role and the demands of success. Hermès is, after all, flourishing under his artistic direction. But he bats away the suggestion. “No, no. I don’t believe in the pressure of success.”
What he does believe in, however, is the relationship between pleasure and desire – bedrock stuff for the H-brand. “They’re two basic human needs and we need both, so pleasure is the present and desire is the future. In fact, if you only live in the present, in pleasure, I’m not sure you’re developing your brain as much as you could. And if you live in desire and never fulfil your desires it’s a never-ending frustration. But desire is what makes us build, create, dream and go forward. We really need both. I think it’s a nice accomplishment to be able to serve pleasure and desire rather than anything negative.
“All these objects,” he says, gesturing, “are not arranged, but they matter to me.” He picks up an orange building-site hard hat: “This is very important. My father, Jean-Louis Dumas, really had a vision to open a modern manufacturing place where craftsmen and women could work in the ideal conditions to give their best. When I was a kid, all the leather production until 1991 was done above the store and there were 80 craftsmen. I worked there for five years from the age of 11, so I remember it very well. My father told me: ‘Craftsmen need natural light, they need space.’ And so with that in mind, the first modern space was built in Fontaine. Now we have over 15 manufacturers and 3,000 craftsmen – that’s why we are a start-up at Hermès. We are 200 years old but we are a start-up!” he says, laughing.