HERMES IN THE HOUSE

The artistic directors of the French heritage brand's home division are challenging the conventional definition of “luxury” one lamp at a time.

- By ELISA LIPSKY-KARASZ

What happens when Hermès makes a three-legged bamboo stool? Well, first, they don't plan to.

Instead, the longtime creative directors of Hermès's home division, Charlotte Macaux Perelman and Alexis Fabry, a French architect and curator respectively, start by thinking about whom they might want to work with. (In this case it was Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza Vieira.) "[His work has] a relationship to the enduring properties of time that felt relevant to Hermès," Perelman says. Next, Siza did some sketches. Then the trio talked about materials—rather than leather or metal, they settled on the more humble bamboo. And then Perelman and Fabry set out to actually make the thing. They tried in Italy; they tried in France. "There were so many nails," Perelman says, throwing up her hands. "We asked ourselves, 'How can we transform this sketch, this architectural wish, into an Hermès object?'"

The answer came from Japanese artisans, who were able to heat the bamboo in order to bend it, and strengthen it from the inside with carbon, without using any visible reinforcements or fasteners. What seem like bamboo cords float across and gracefully wrap underneath a triangular seat; the whole thing can be lifted easily with one hand.