Collection 2015: La Maison des Carrés

To ring in the new year, I thought of a design to celebrate one more aspect of the Maison.

La Maison des Carrés is the name of Hermes' online boutique, dedicated to the iconic Hermès silk square.

To celebrate the concept, La Maison des Carrés is a delightful, colourful, humorous account of the creation of an Hermès silk square, from its initial inspiration to the point of sale, with a peek at the colouring and printing processes along the way.  Here, too, are the house museum and its cabinet of curiosities (the inspiration for so many designs), the creative studio – that vital incubator of talent – and last but not least the actors who escort each carré on its great adventure, together with the hubs and nerve centres where each scarf’s destiny is spun and woven, before being tied at the neck, shoulders, waist or head of whoever chooses to buy it and take it home.  

Collection FW2015: Flots, Fleurs et Frontaux

Émile Hermès began collecting at the age of twelve.  The resulting ‘cabinet of curiosities’ reflects the open, inquiring mind of this passionate, amateur art lover.  Émile was a tireless walker, and a regular at the sale rooms, endlessly on the look-out for strange, unexpected pieces to add to those he had already amassed.

The equestrian world holds a special place: Virginie Jamin’s neatly-ordered scarf takes inspiration from the models in a 19th-century catalogue.  Brow-bands (the bridle strap positioned across the horse’s forehead) decorated with medallions are arranged in a labyrinth of straight lines, while ribbon rosettes, presented as prizes at equestrian competitions, are displayed amid a scattering of flowers.

Collection FW2015: L'Arbre du vent

L’Arbre du vent is a tribute to the Huichol people of Mexico’s western Sierra Madre – also known as the Wixáritari – and their polytheistic religion, worshipping the divinity inherent in every aspect of the natural world.

At its centre, the scarf depicts the eye of god, the protector, surrounded by the four elements, marking the four corners of the Huichol world: 

1. Mother Water, the origin of life, Tatei Haramara; 

2. Earth, the soul of the world, Tatei Yurianaka, with two hummingbirds fluttering above, symbolising the souls of traditional shamans; 

3. Grandfather Fire, Tatehuari; and,

4. Air, Kieiri, the Wind Tree. 

Mexican artist Montserrat Gonzalez-Lugo has taken inspiration from traditional bead embroideries and threaded wool pictures to depict the essence of Huichol spirituality.

Collection FW2015: Brides de Gala Brodé

Brides de gala is without doubt the house's most celebrated carré.  Its subject?  The equestrian world, of course.  The flamboyantly decorative bridles, and the perfection of the composition, capture the essence of the timeless Hermès spirit. 

Its title, short and to the point, has the same, direct impact as the dazzling show bridles themselves, evoking the clink of buckles and chains to the rhythmic, majestic beat of the horses' hooves.  Leïla Menchari reinvented this classic design, having it reworked by the nimble fingers of her master embroiderers.  The sharp, detailed image took on a more sensual, velvety feel.  Framed as an element in one of Leïla's unforgettable window displays, the piece was subsequently hung in the office of Hermès president Jean-Louis Dumas, to whom she presented it, as a souvenir.

Collection FW2015: Bouquets Sellier

A curious quartet!  Straps, curb chains, harnesses and stirrups are gathered into bright bouquets, like cut flowers.  Tassles hang like clustered bluebells, leather straps are tied into bows, spurs resemble starry daisies, bits are looped like flower garlands, and riding crops become calyxes.  Horses' heads, their manes rippling and ringletted, burst from the sheaves like wild blooms.  Arranged on horse blankets, folded to show their front and reverse sides, the four compositions are a perfect metamorphosis of fabrics, leather and metal parts.

Collection FW2015: Cheval Fusion

Metal in fusion. Mercury, perhaps? The substance is sleek, glossy, somehow alive… and supremely seductive.  Impossible not to think of another carré – Vif argent, created a few seasons ago by the same designer, Dimitri Rybaltchenko – at the sight of this design.  Mercury is unique: a metal in a naturally liquid state, sensitive to the slightest pressure, so that it scatters in a multitude of fluid, free-flowing baubles.

Cheval fusion: the protean liquid suggests an array of potential forms.  Bits, buckles and stirrups coalesce, and a proud steed is born.  The magic of metamorphosis!  Could this be the lair of Hephaestus, the Greek god of the forge and volcanoes, inventor of magical objects?  Could this outburst of metal hold a clue to the secret art of alchemy?  Remember – Mercury is also a planet, named for a Roman god, whose Greek ancestor bore the name… Hermes.

Collection FW2015: Le Potager Extraordinaire

Like the island of Lilliput, discovered by Lemuel Gulliver in the course of his extraordinary Travels, as related by Jonathan Swift, the inhabitants of Pierre-Marie’s imagined city are ‘lilliputian’ (tiny) indeed. 

The design presents the delightful spectacle of their daily lives. In this childlike world of transformations and metmorphoses, a vegetable garden becomes a complex city inhabited by creatures identical to ourselves in every way, but who are no more than an inch or two in height. Flowing with water thanks to an ingenious irrigation system doubling as a water-slide, the city’s dwelling-places are clearly named: cucumis melo (a melon), foeniculum (a fennel bulb) or cucurbita maxima (a pumpkin)... Take time to look around – there are surprises and delights at every turn. Lovers meet in the shade of a grove of leeks, a man sits meditating at the heart of a lotus-shaped artichoke, a marrow is cut to form a car, and a minuscule duo set to work slicing a radish with a two-handled saw…

Collection FW2015: Les Ailes de la Soie

 The butterfly is without doubt the most enduring symbol of metamorphosis.  Earthbound in caterpillar form, it next becomes a nymph or larva, and an imago, before fluttering into the air with incomparable delicacy.  The cocoon it leaves behind is spun from threads of which precious material? Silk, of course.

Aline Honoré’s design borrows the silhouette and pattern of four superb lepidopterae – the Attacus Caesar of the southern Philippines, the Argema Mittrei or Comet Moth of Madagascar, the Epiphora Bauhiniae or silkmoth of Saharan Africa, and the "Jacobece d’Amérique".  Their delicate, dazzlingly-coloured wings are decked with a multitude of geometric motifs, defining their stylised silhouettes against a background of silken cocoons.

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.

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.

Collection FW2015: Harnais des Présidents

Collection FW2015: Millefleurs du Mexique

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.

Collection FW2015: Pégase Pop

Mount of the gods, friend of the Muses, Pegasus, the winged horse of Antiquity is transfigured by the magic of Pop culture… He can summon a spring, gushing forth with one strike of his hoof, but his name is associated with storms, too – Zeus chose him to carry thunderbolts and lightning to Mount Olympus. 

And it is in this role that Dimitri Rybaltchenko chooses to depict the winged brother of the beloved Hermès horse, bursting out from behind the clouds in a brilliant flash of lightning. Hatched lines, bold forms and contours, flat expanses of colour, dots, and explosive energy, coupled with simple, effective line… American Pop Art is a wingbeat away!

Collection FW2015: Le Fil d'Ariane

Ariadne was the daughter of Minos, King of Crete, and his queen Pasiphaë, daughter of Helios. She is mostly associated with mazes and labyrinths, due to her involvement in the myths of the Minotaur and Theseus.  Her father put her in charge of the labyrinth where sacrifices were made as part of reparations (either to Poseidon or to Athena, depending on the version of the myth); however, she would later help Theseus in overcoming the Minotaur and saving the would-be sacrificial victims. 

In other stories, she became the bride of the god Dionysus, with the question of her background as being either a mortal or a goddess varying in those accounts.