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.

Collection FW2015: A la plume

"A simple design, fluttering like a bird at the window". A delightful simile for the scarf, hand-drawn by the one and only Florence Manlik (we got acquainted to her thanks to the beautiful Brides de Gala en Finesse).  This is the perfect evocation of an image as delicate and light as a feather. 

Like a collection of quills, the multicoloured plumes spell out ‘Hermès Paris’, the words poised to float away on the air.  Myriad fine lines compose this ethereal, colourful composition, seemingly wafted onto the soft silk square by the breath of creativity itself.  Inspiration a-plenty, infinite patience, intense concentration...  

A unique approach to the art of drawing, based on the extraordinary precision of a single gesture, repeated a thousand times over.

Collection FW2015: Manufacture de Boucleries

Throughout his life, Emile Hermès, that inveterate collector, amassed a magnificent ensemble of objects and books devoted to the equestrian arts. Among the works acquired on his travels, these catalogues advertise the range of products made by a 19th-century harness buckle factory.

Memory is central to the work of Italian-born designer, artist, illustrator and author Gianpaolo Pagni, an adoptive Parisian who collaborates with numerous French and international publications including Le Monde, La Stampa and the Washington Post.

 Pagni creates stamped designs in a bewildering array of forms, using them to cover and transfigure the pages of more prosaic documents – magazines or schoolbooks –, generating mysterious signs and symbols. Accumulation and repetition create an intimate, poetic archaeology all their own.  The bits and stirrups, curb chains, hame chains and stable rings featured in the album spring to life under Pagni’s magical touch, forging a new link between his work and the house of Hermès.