Hermès Les Jeux de l’ombre high jewellery collection
Hermès’ latest high jewellery collection embraces the shadow that makes light possible.
A shadow can be open to interpretation. Pierre Hardy, creative director of fine jewellery at Hermès, explores the juxtaposition of darkness and light, what is concealed and what is revealed, in Les Jeux de l’ombre (Shadow Games), his seventh high jewellery collection for the house.
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Explore the Watch and Jewellery special edition of WISH, available online and in print on Friday, 18 November.
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Hardy plays with expectations of high jewellery in the 53-piece collection. It’s an MO he has explored since taking on fine jewellery at Hermès in 2001, and then the maison’s high jewellery universe in 2010. He joined Hermès in 1990 as creative director of women’s, and then men’s, shoes. It is a role he still holds, along with creating his own eponymous footwear brand.
“High jewellery is mostly about shining, whiteness, light, transparency, size. And I wanted to consider from the reverse, almost, to show this part of the shadow that we don’t pay attention [to], and just to manifest and materialise it,” he says.
For Hardy, the beauty of the unusual stones used in the collection is emphasised by the shadow element. After all, as the English poet John Gay once said, “shadow owes its birth to light”.
The concept is realised in some of the shapes and gems, such as pink tourmalines, topaz and diamonds set with a literal shadow in the form of orbs of black jade. It’s there too in pieces such as the Chaîne d’ombre necklace (the motif an emblem of the house, designed by Robert Dumas more than 80 years ago), which sets black spinels and blue sapphires in contrast with flat-cut white diamonds. The Chaîne d’ombre necklace took almost 2000 hours to create, 700 hours in gem-setting alone.
Hardy has a background in fine arts and dance, and the contrast of the gems with the shadows is reminiscent of a performer waiting on a stage for their moment. “On a theatre stage; you have the actress or the ballerina or the singer, and there is this spot of light,” he says. “This moment then allows everything else to fall into shadow, and take on a new form.
The design process for Les Jeux de l’ombre was unusual for Hardy, mostly because he says there hardly was one. Instead, he let the stones guide him. “Most of the time I design the shapes and the different pieces, but for this one I didn’t design anything, basically. I was mesmerised by the beauty of the first stone we had. It was a brown diamond, uncut, barely polished. The beauty of this stone was unbelievable. Then we found another one, a yellow one, and I asked myself, how to use it but without touching it? And I just put light on it and the shadow that it produced is what became the ring. And the ring is the exact reproduction or materialisation of this. Call it a luminescent shadow.”
Another way Hardy plays with preconceived ideas of high jewellery, and modes of preciousness, is in his choice of gemstones – including rough ones such as the brown diamond and unexpected ones like moonstones. “I looked for the weird kinds,” he says. He wanted strange colours, as well as strong and irregular cuts that would cast an interesting shape when hit with the light. The gems used, he says, are “a marvel”.
“When you look you say, ‘what can I add?’ And who am I to pretend to go beyond this purity, or beyond this unbelievable shape?”
Ultimately, he says, Les Jeux de l’ombre “is a paradox”. Throughout the collection is a sense of articulation, utility and surprise. Take the Couleurs du jour necklace. Reminiscent of a stained glass window, it features pavé-set black spinels and mother-of-pearl, studded with one 2.5 carat diamond, and pavé-set and baguette-cut diamonds, peridots, amethysts, tourmalines, aquamarines, spessartite garnets and moonstone. Hidden inside is a mechanism that allows the piece to be opened and closed.
The blending of the mechanical and the delightful, of complexity and ease, is something Hardy prizes.
“Flexibility is essential because of its relation to the body, and how the jewels can ‘play’ with the body. But in this collection, I experimented [with] a different kind of mobility: some pendants are like ‘secret boxes’ that can be worn closed or opened, backwards or forward, to let them reveal or not, throughout a very precious opening mechanism, the light that they hide inside the shadow.”
While the collection references pieces from past collections such as the sculptural Fouet Ombré necklace, a shape from the maison’s first high jewellery collection that undulates like the equestrian’s whip, Hardy likes to always look forward, and reinvent forms.
“Working for Hermès, I think that part of my job is to introduce new shapes, new words in the vocabulary, new formulas. I don’t know if they will be successful,” he says. “Maybe they’ll become a part of the Hermès vocabulary or maybe one day they will be a classic … This you can’t predict. Newness will remain something that forged the new story of the house that is, of course, older than I am and that will continue after me.”
Ultimately though, each new shape or design choice will reflect the spiritedness of Hermès. Especially when they are worn. “Everybody knows there are some Hermès codes, but it’s very unmaterial,” says Hardy. “It’s a way of behaving. It’s a way of dressing, it’s a way of walking. When you see it you can define, ‘oh this is very Hermès’. The most sensitive part of the job is to try to recreate this feeling of recognition.”
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