The creative director of fine jewellery at Hermès, Pierre Hardy, touches a sore point with the latest collection of Hermès Lignes Sensibles. This release focuses on how the pandemic has, amongst other things, robbed us of human touch. He started his undertaking: “The entire collection is oriented towards intimacy”. Hardy is choosing to look within, extending an invitation to explore the relationship with oneself.
His starting point is the stethoscope, used by medical professionals to listen to the sounds and vibrations within the body. “I have tried to mark the passage between the interior and the exterior: the pieces of jewellery that I create are like small organs that emit sounds,” clarifies Hardy. “They are subtle pulsations that form a connection with the invisible.”
The internal-external mentality is exemplified in circuits, dropstones, intricate geometric shapes, and a sensual fluidity that curves around parts of the body like a second skin. “The whole collection resembles a caress,” explains Hardy. “The necklaces are as soft as the arms around the neck. I wanted the rings to be at one with the body and not simply a gemstone placed on a finger. I sought osmosis with the hand.”
Hardy also utilised naturalism as a touchstone to guide his choice of materials. “I wanted to use a range of gemstones in colours close to skin tone. I looked for flesh colours, shades specific to the complexion, the lips, or the iris. I looked for cloudy, milky materials to become one with the skin.”
In the À l’écoute necklace, a rose gold path overlaid with diamonds forms an asymmetrical constellation that’s emphasised with cabochons and tourmalines of green-yellow, brown, blue and pink. It is joined by a bold, glove-like hand jewellery piece featuring a 4.6-carat black jade cabochon, tourmaline cabochons, citrine and diamonds.
However, the centrepiece of the collection is a dazzling collar necklace in Contre la Peau, composed of brilliant white diamonds expertly formed into triangles through the technique of “meshing” to mimic the natural texture of the micro-wrinkles on the skin. When laying the latticed structure upon the clavicle, it enswathes like an exquisite gem-studded scarf with the brilliant stones coalescing with each contour on the neck, mirroring every movement and sliding over like a second skin.
There is a fragility to the collection echoed in the delicacy of colours and gentle adornment. But like the body, it’s not without structure and solidity. “I love that the body holds so much symmetry; it is a wealth of mechanisms and articulations,” says Hardy. “The jewellery that I create attempts to bring to the surface these inherent facets of the human body and to exalt them.”
Under Hardy’s leadership, Hermès high jewellery has thrived and matured in a timespan that’s relatively short compared to the Maison’s legacy in its other departments, and he, in turn, has evolved with it. For one, the use of gemstones, albeit stones that are uniquely Hermès in their understated palette, are going to play a more central role. And secondly, Hardy’s approach to Hermès jewellery has become “more precise and more profound.”