The Wiser Hatter
I'll Lock Up
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Mario Troise and The Hermès Scarf
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Elmonteman
One of the Regulars
- Messages
- 113
Thanks for posting that. I brought one back from Paris for a friend recently and she literally was jumping for joy. The design was a beautiful Bengal tiger with bright turquoise eyes. Nice to see how it's done.
Who designs Hermes scarves?
Paris
[video]http://on.wsj.com/194yQMN[/video]
Every Hermès scarf has a tale. "Les Cannes" emerged from a framed collection of antique canes that artist Virginie Jamin spied in the company's private museum.
The Hermès scarf is a coveted, much-collected symbol of success that defines the Paris-based luxury company. But it has no single designer. Rather, the scarves are designed by a far-flung array of freelance artists. Hermès scarf designers can be found in places from Poland to Japan, not to mention the U.S. post-office sorting room in Waco, Texas. Kermit Oliver, a longtime postal employee, has designed more than a dozen Hermès scarves.
Ms. Jamin, a children's-book illustrator, was signing books at a Paris book shop when Christine Duvigneau, head of Hermès's graphic-design studio, happened to stop in. Ms. Duvigneau liked Ms. Jamin's "naive" style, she says, and invited her to the office. Her 2012 scarf, "Les Cannes," is now used as a print for Hermès clothes as well.
Fine artist Antoine Tzapoff lives in Paris but specializes in scarves based on his paintings of Native Americans. He is passionate about historically accurate detail, insisting, for instance, that Hermès print the correct number of minuscule beads on the dress of a Crow woman in one of his designs.
In all, the French company has roughly 50 freelance artists at a time designing new scarves, with the aim of producing 20 new designs per year. The designs are central for Hermès, which sprinkles the patterns and colors throughout its collections of ready-to-wear clothing, accessories and housewares. The typical scarf costs around $410, but large sizes can cost double that, and special-edition scarves can be much more. The scarves have long lives, reprinted over the years in new color combinations.
More than 2,000 Hermès scarf designs exist, though not all have yet been produced. The first was created in 1937, based on a woodblock drawing by Robert Dumas, a Hermès family member. The rest await their fate in "le frigo" ("the fridge"), a white metal box with thin drawers that sits in Ms. Duvigneau's office, just off the chic Rue St.-Honoré.
To provide a rich variety of new scarf designs, Bali Barret, Hermès's creative director of silks, is constantly scouting new talent. She meets with as many as 100 potential designers each year.
Ms. Barret, an avant-garde fashion designer herself, has traveled to a Texas ranch and a Polish castle seeking artists and design concepts. There are just a few rules for an Hermès scarf design, she says: "No sex. No blood."
Ms. Barret has another rule for working with artists: Never be alone with them. "Because working with an artist," she says, "it is very emotional. It's hard to say no."
While the artists own the intellectual property, the design is a collaboration between the artist, Ms. Barret, Ms. Duvigneau, and Pierre-Alexis Dumas, the company's artistic director and the great-great-great grandson of founder Thierry Hermès. The design can take as long as a year to evolve, as ideas and sketches are passed back and forth. Mr. Agin describes the development process as "a ping-pong game."
Hermès
Swirling Skirts: 'Belles du Mexique,' the first scarf Virginie Jamin designed for Hermès, evoked dancers.
.
For her first scarf, "Belles du Mexique," in 2004, Ms. Jamin wanted to illustrate dancers. She considered a Flamenco dancer, but Hermès had already done a Flamenco scarf. The whirling dervishes she proposed lacked enticing ornamentation on their clothes. Ultimately, she painted Mexican dancers from directly above, their colorful skirts swirling below the parts in their hair.
Now Ms. Jamin keeps a steady eye out for her next Hermès scarf idea. Commercial realities can intrude. During a meeting last fall, the conversation drifted to another collectible, Barbie dolls, which are manufactured by Mattel. "I could do a Barbie scarf," Ms. Jamin proposed. "No," replied Ms. Duvigneau firmly. "The royalties to the company would be impossible."
Hermès won't disclose what the artists are paid. It says the artists earn royalties on sales of their scarves, making popular scarves more lucrative for the artists.
Another scarf began with a parasol of pheasant feathers. Pierre-Marie Agin, then a 26-year-old artist who aspired to design for Hermès, requested a meeting with Ms. Barret. He is also an independent artist who has shown work at the Louvre's Musée Des Arts Décoratifs and the l'Opéra National de Paris, and has developed drawings for Diptyque candles and scents and Veuve Clicquot champagnes.
Christina Binkley/The Wall Street Journal
Mix Color: A technician mixes the precise color to create Hermès orange. The average number of colors in Hermès scarf is 27.
.
He says Ms. Barret asked him to propose an idea based on a fairy tale and sent him to the company museum—an eccentric, decades-old collection of art and historical objects that occupies several rooms behind the flagship store. Beginning as the personal collection of the Hermès family, it contains silver cups, belt buckles, Victorian children's toys, blankets from Turkmenistan and antique books, among other items.
When Mr. Agin, who also works under the name Pierre Marie, got there, he noticed the parasol in a cluttered corner. He says, "the umbrella fascinated me because it's very whimsical and dreamlike." The sketches he made of it that day became "L'Ombrelle Magique," a best-selling Hermès scarf with an elaborate fairy-tale motif. The scarf was first produced in 2010 and sold around the world in 10 color combinations.
The scarf came to depict a tale about a lonely prince who carries a feathered parasol and meets a hermit who lives in a chestnut tree. During his journey, the parasol becomes a princess whose skirt is made of pheasant feathers. "You just have to build the story around the elements you want to put on the scarf," says Mr. Agin.
.
The composition of a design within the confines of a square of silk isn't for every artist. But Ms. Barret says Mr. Agin was quick to learn. "He was very young, but he had a mature hand. He submitted a sketch and it was there—the whole scarf!"
Once a design is complete, the scarves move into the hands of Hermès artisans. At the Hermès workshops outside the town of Lyon, a collection of industrial buildings, where 750 employees work, it takes about 18 months to produce a scarf design. There, engravers take six months to determine each scarf's distinct colors, such as the beige, pink, graphite and other skin tones in a face. The average number of colors in an Hermès scarf is 27, says Kamel Hamadou, Hermès's Lyon-based silk specialist.
After a painstaking printing process—it takes 750 hours on average to engrave the screens for printing each design—the scarves are cut from lengths of cloth and hand-rolled with tiny stitches around the edges. One seamstress rolls about seven scarves per day, depending on size and material. They face no production quotas or time requirements.
Ms. Duvigneau says Hermès keeps the designers away from the production process, so they're not too mindful of the effort involved in realizing their designs.
Paris
[video]http://on.wsj.com/194yQMN[/video]
Every Hermès scarf has a tale. "Les Cannes" emerged from a framed collection of antique canes that artist Virginie Jamin spied in the company's private museum.
The Hermès scarf is a coveted, much-collected symbol of success that defines the Paris-based luxury company. But it has no single designer. Rather, the scarves are designed by a far-flung array of freelance artists. Hermès scarf designers can be found in places from Poland to Japan, not to mention the U.S. post-office sorting room in Waco, Texas. Kermit Oliver, a longtime postal employee, has designed more than a dozen Hermès scarves.
Ms. Jamin, a children's-book illustrator, was signing books at a Paris book shop when Christine Duvigneau, head of Hermès's graphic-design studio, happened to stop in. Ms. Duvigneau liked Ms. Jamin's "naive" style, she says, and invited her to the office. Her 2012 scarf, "Les Cannes," is now used as a print for Hermès clothes as well.
Fine artist Antoine Tzapoff lives in Paris but specializes in scarves based on his paintings of Native Americans. He is passionate about historically accurate detail, insisting, for instance, that Hermès print the correct number of minuscule beads on the dress of a Crow woman in one of his designs.
In all, the French company has roughly 50 freelance artists at a time designing new scarves, with the aim of producing 20 new designs per year. The designs are central for Hermès, which sprinkles the patterns and colors throughout its collections of ready-to-wear clothing, accessories and housewares. The typical scarf costs around $410, but large sizes can cost double that, and special-edition scarves can be much more. The scarves have long lives, reprinted over the years in new color combinations.
More than 2,000 Hermès scarf designs exist, though not all have yet been produced. The first was created in 1937, based on a woodblock drawing by Robert Dumas, a Hermès family member. The rest await their fate in "le frigo" ("the fridge"), a white metal box with thin drawers that sits in Ms. Duvigneau's office, just off the chic Rue St.-Honoré.
To provide a rich variety of new scarf designs, Bali Barret, Hermès's creative director of silks, is constantly scouting new talent. She meets with as many as 100 potential designers each year.
Ms. Barret, an avant-garde fashion designer herself, has traveled to a Texas ranch and a Polish castle seeking artists and design concepts. There are just a few rules for an Hermès scarf design, she says: "No sex. No blood."
Ms. Barret has another rule for working with artists: Never be alone with them. "Because working with an artist," she says, "it is very emotional. It's hard to say no."
While the artists own the intellectual property, the design is a collaboration between the artist, Ms. Barret, Ms. Duvigneau, and Pierre-Alexis Dumas, the company's artistic director and the great-great-great grandson of founder Thierry Hermès. The design can take as long as a year to evolve, as ideas and sketches are passed back and forth. Mr. Agin describes the development process as "a ping-pong game."
Hermès
Swirling Skirts: 'Belles du Mexique,' the first scarf Virginie Jamin designed for Hermès, evoked dancers.
.
For her first scarf, "Belles du Mexique," in 2004, Ms. Jamin wanted to illustrate dancers. She considered a Flamenco dancer, but Hermès had already done a Flamenco scarf. The whirling dervishes she proposed lacked enticing ornamentation on their clothes. Ultimately, she painted Mexican dancers from directly above, their colorful skirts swirling below the parts in their hair.
Now Ms. Jamin keeps a steady eye out for her next Hermès scarf idea. Commercial realities can intrude. During a meeting last fall, the conversation drifted to another collectible, Barbie dolls, which are manufactured by Mattel. "I could do a Barbie scarf," Ms. Jamin proposed. "No," replied Ms. Duvigneau firmly. "The royalties to the company would be impossible."
Hermès won't disclose what the artists are paid. It says the artists earn royalties on sales of their scarves, making popular scarves more lucrative for the artists.
Another scarf began with a parasol of pheasant feathers. Pierre-Marie Agin, then a 26-year-old artist who aspired to design for Hermès, requested a meeting with Ms. Barret. He is also an independent artist who has shown work at the Louvre's Musée Des Arts Décoratifs and the l'Opéra National de Paris, and has developed drawings for Diptyque candles and scents and Veuve Clicquot champagnes.
Christina Binkley/The Wall Street Journal
Mix Color: A technician mixes the precise color to create Hermès orange. The average number of colors in Hermès scarf is 27.
.
He says Ms. Barret asked him to propose an idea based on a fairy tale and sent him to the company museum—an eccentric, decades-old collection of art and historical objects that occupies several rooms behind the flagship store. Beginning as the personal collection of the Hermès family, it contains silver cups, belt buckles, Victorian children's toys, blankets from Turkmenistan and antique books, among other items.
When Mr. Agin, who also works under the name Pierre Marie, got there, he noticed the parasol in a cluttered corner. He says, "the umbrella fascinated me because it's very whimsical and dreamlike." The sketches he made of it that day became "L'Ombrelle Magique," a best-selling Hermès scarf with an elaborate fairy-tale motif. The scarf was first produced in 2010 and sold around the world in 10 color combinations.
The scarf came to depict a tale about a lonely prince who carries a feathered parasol and meets a hermit who lives in a chestnut tree. During his journey, the parasol becomes a princess whose skirt is made of pheasant feathers. "You just have to build the story around the elements you want to put on the scarf," says Mr. Agin.
.
The composition of a design within the confines of a square of silk isn't for every artist. But Ms. Barret says Mr. Agin was quick to learn. "He was very young, but he had a mature hand. He submitted a sketch and it was there—the whole scarf!"
Once a design is complete, the scarves move into the hands of Hermès artisans. At the Hermès workshops outside the town of Lyon, a collection of industrial buildings, where 750 employees work, it takes about 18 months to produce a scarf design. There, engravers take six months to determine each scarf's distinct colors, such as the beige, pink, graphite and other skin tones in a face. The average number of colors in an Hermès scarf is 27, says Kamel Hamadou, Hermès's Lyon-based silk specialist.
After a painstaking printing process—it takes 750 hours on average to engrave the screens for printing each design—the scarves are cut from lengths of cloth and hand-rolled with tiny stitches around the edges. One seamstress rolls about seven scarves per day, depending on size and material. They face no production quotas or time requirements.
Ms. Duvigneau says Hermès keeps the designers away from the production process, so they're not too mindful of the effort involved in realizing their designs.
dhermann1
I'll Lock Up
- Messages
- 9,154
- Location
- Da Bronx, NY, USA
So fascinating. No matter how many times I see silk screening, I always think to myself, "That's impossible." The results of fine silk screening are so beautiful. An amazing process.
PHIL1959
One of the Regulars
- Messages
- 265
- Location
- anchorsholme england
I LOVE Hermes silk scarves their silk handkerchiefs and perfumes. i wear a Hermes pocket square daily
thanks for posting
thanks for posting
Alex Oviatt
Practically Family
- Messages
- 515
- Location
- Pasadena, CA
I do, too!
feltfan
My Mail is Forwarded Here
- Messages
- 3,190
- Location
- Oakland, CA, USA
I love how easy the video makes it look. That kind of color registration is not easy. I'm sure they have some tricks, but wow.
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