From its first foray into home furnishings in the 1920s, Hermès has had a distinguished track record of joining forces with high-caliber designers, including Jean-Michel Frank and Paul Dupré-Lafon. Resurrecting the tradition in 2011, the French fashion house began enlisting such top guns as Enzo Mari, Antonio Citterio, and Shigeru Ban to design for the expanded Hermès Maison, which now offers a complete world of carefully crafted tables, chairs, wallpaper, rugs, and porcelain. The only category effectively missing from its array of home products was lighting, a gap that the brand has filled with three new lines, unveiled last April at Milan’s Salone del Mobile.
Not surprisingly, the company picked a pair of esteemed talents to create the collections: Italian architect Michele De Lucchi, a founder of Milan’s Memphis movement, and French artist Yann Kersalé, known for his large-scale light installations. "We worked on this project for more than three years," says Hermès artistic director Pierre-Alexis Dumas. "In today’s world, it’s crucial to go slowly."
The painstaking process paid off with lighting that possesses unusual flair. De Lucchi’s Harnais lamps, inspired by a horse harness, feature hand-saddle-stitched leather straps connecting the base to an opaline shade. His leather-clad Pantographe lamps are articulated like highly engineered draftsman’s compasses, each model’s graceful arm easily adjustable. "You don’t find handmade lamps like these today," says De Lucchi. "You can feel the emotion of the object just by looking at it."
Items are now available for pre-order, with stock arriving in October.