Saturday, October 31, 2015

Collection FW2015: Mélodie Chromatique


Musical notes and colours show close affinities: abstract art pioneer Wassily Kandinsky evoked the musicality of colour in modern painting, and composer Olivier Messiaen celebrated the perpetual dialogue of sound and colour.



Virgine Jamin’s design evokes the pipes and bowls of a complex still, or a curious arrangement of organ pipes. ‘Colours are musical notes,’ she says. If so, then the silk carrés of Hermès, with their endlessly-inventive, perfectly-balanced chromatic harmonies, are alive with resonant, vibrant sound, inspiring a poetic choreography in the wearer. 

Here, each colour bears a hint of the nuance to come, just as each step heralds the next.

Saturday, October 24, 2015

Collection FW2015: Tatersale


Four heads come face-to-face on a chequered blanket.  Carefully placed, decked in head- and neck-guards tied with bows, the horses’ heads are transformed into stylish figurines.


Named for Tattersalls – England’s most prestigious equine auction house, founded in 1766 – this carré adopts one of the many alternative spellings of the family name, which has changed down the centuries, like so many others.  The simple, precise, structured design showcases the panoply of bridlery used for the showing of horses: canvas straps, steel bits, leather harnesses.  Just part of the arsenal of the equestrian arts, transformed by Henri d’Origny into attrative, geometric compositions of decorative motifs, sometimes swirling in arabesque curves, sometimes quiet and well-behaved, neatly arranged in squares, as here.

Saturday, October 3, 2015

Collection FW2015: Minuit au Faubourg


The clock strikes twelve.  Midnight in Paris, and the city seems calm and quiet.  But a signal beams out from the Eiffel Tower: a call to Super H!  Something’s afoot.  Masked and cloaked, the proud horse atop the Hermès building undergoes a strange metmorphosis, ready for action.  We watch breathlessly as he prepares to take flight – a modern Pegasus for the world of the comic strip.

A few seasons ago, another carré – Quand soudain (‘When suddenly…’) – showed him with his rider, galloping, mane rippling in the wind.  Here, watched from a discreet distance by his groom, standing behind a nearby window, he sports a super-hero costume all his own.  What’s about to happen? Find out next time, in the adventures of Super H.