Hermès artistic directors Charlotte Macaux Perelman and Alexis Fabry on the search for the right design gesture

One can see the continuation of this exploration in how the two artistic directors of Hermès’s home universe, Charlotte Macaux Perelman and Alexis Fabry, work. Each year’s scenography grows organically from the last, always in pursuit of what they call the right gesture.

“The scenography always comes from what the objects are saying. It is this dialogue between objects and space that matters to us,” says Fabry. “The scenography is completely linked to the content.” Artistic directors of the Hermès home universe since 2014, he and Macaux Perelman have built this world together for more than a decade.

“We were very close friends, but we had never worked together,” says Macaux Perelman. “When Pierre-Alexis and Axel brought us together, it seemed to us—une idée saugrenue—a particularly absurd idea,” she recalls, referring to Hermès’ CEO Axel Dumas and artistic director Pierre-Alexis Dumas, sixth-generation cousins from the founding family. “But after 11 years, I consider it one of the most beautiful surprises of our commitment to Hermès.”

While the founder’s decision seemed counterintuitive at the time, it has been proven time and again to be an instinct worth trusting. Macaux Perelman’s background in architecture and Fabry’s in photography and curation seem to complement each other.

“There is no division of tasks,” says Fabry. “We hold the position in the same place, Charlotte and I.” What this looks like in the room is two people who have long stopped needing to explain themselves to each other; sentences finished, ideas caught mid-air, Macaux Perelman turning to Fabry at one point to say, simply: “Tu le dis très bien.” You say it very well.

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This year’s collection is anchored by the Palladion d’Hermès, a new line of objects in hand-hammered palladium-finish metal, combined with leather, horsehair and wood. The name invokes Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of protection.

The objects—a centrepiece, a jug, vases—function as what the house calls contemporary talismans. But the choice of palladium was driven by its material qualities rather than the myth embedded in its name. “We had already worked with metal before, with bronze,” says Macaux Perelman. “What interested us in palladium was its refinement and purity. And what we wanted to add was the artisan’s gesture. We hammered it by hand, so each piece is unique.”

For Fabry, the question of gesture is always the same question, regardless of material. “The key issue for us is always to find the right degree of expressiveness,” he says. “Especially when working with a new material, what gesture will allow us to obtain it? That is almost the mantra of our work. We are always the arbiters of this just expressiveness.”

The collaborators, too, are chosen by that same measure. Barber & Osgerby, who designed the Stadium d’Hermès table, were selected not for their already prominent name, but for a specific quality Fabry identifies as “a melange of purity and brilliance”. These qualities, Fabry adds, are what they are looking for in external collaborators.

The most quietly remarkable object in the 2026 presentation is one that Hermès cannot yet sell. The H Letter throw, designed by South Korean artist Hyunjee Jung, is made using bojagi, a traditional Korean technique of sewing textile panels together with coloured silk thread, requiring hundreds of hours of painstaking work. A giant H is discreetly visible within its seams.

It is, for now, a prototype. “She is an artist, not an artisan,” says Macaux Perelman of Jung. “She cannot repeat the gesture, and we are still searching for the right artisans to do it.”

The decision to show it anyway was deliberate. “You will see in the coming years,” says Fabry, “the ripple effect of this exploration.” The connection to Hermès runs deeper than aesthetics. “The stitching in leather is very important in the Hermès heritage,” says Macaux Perelman. “And the stitches of the bojagi refer to what we think of as the perfection of our leather stitching. It is a technique we wanted to explore, and now we are working to bring it to our artisans.”

Showing the prototype on the exhibition floor, in this context, becomes a declaration of intent, and a little treat to those who appreciate haute craftsmanship.

When asked whether slow, craft-led processes feel at risk in today’s design landscape, Fabry is calm, almost serene. “We are rather in a favourable position,” he admits. “There is a general awareness now that there are too many objects, too many perishable things that are not really worth their while. At Hermès, we have always had a relationship particularly adapted to this kind of awareness,” he elaborates.

Macaux Perelman smiles, adding, “For us? We are very slow.” As if slowness, at Hermès, were never the problem, only ever the point.

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