At Milan Design Week 2025, Hermès invites visitors into a contemplative, tactile experience that explores the very essence of object-making. Titled What Makes the Object, the installation presents its latest Collections for the Home within a conceptual structure that blurs the boundary between container and content. Drawing inspiration from the idea of a sculptor’s block, Hermès frames its objects not merely as functional designs but as vessels for memory and emotional resonance.
DESIGN
Inside the space, objects emerge gradually, through apertures, light wells, and transparent skins, as if slowly revealing themselves to the attentive eye. Furniture, tableware, glass, and textiles appear less as fixtures and more as moments suspended between purpose and poetry. This curatorial approach is not just visual but philosophical, it emphasizes how the aura of an object remains partly in the imagination, even after it leaves its “box.”
Glass takes center stage across several new designs. Studio Hermès presents pieces like Vase Casaque and Glasses Casaque, where precision-cut patterns shift in tone depending on angle and light, offering a sense of motion in solid form. The Jugs Doublé d’Hermès push the boundaries of craftsmanship with layered molten glass and hand-shaped handles, their hues subtly shifting when filled with water. Most ambitious is the Vase Doublé d’Hermès, composed of up to seven layers of cased glass contrasted with supple leather cuffs, forming geometric patterns that merge opacity with lightness.
Playfulness and paradox find their expression in Pivot d’Hermès, a side table designed by Tomás Alonso. With a lacquered glass base and a cedarwood box that spins on an eccentric axis, the table dances between stability and movement. Meanwhile, Nigel Peake’s Hermès En Contrepoint dinner service translates musical rhythm into porcelain, its hand-drawn motifs painted in watercolour offering infinite combinations for the table. Leather also joins the conversation in the Basket Paddock, which references equestrian tartans through finely stitched layers of Evercolor and Epsom calfskin.
Textiles, always a cornerstone of Hermès home offerings, bring warmth and narrative. Artist Amer Musa contributes two standout designs: Throw Points et Plans, which evokes a child’s game using multicolored appliqué on ikat-woven cashmere, and Throw H Partition, a musically inspired piece woven in ivory chevron cashmere and dusted with 24-carat gold powder. The Throw Summer Dye and Throw Summer Jacquard explore hand-dyed color gradation and tactile layering, reinforcing Hermès’ reverence for slowness, process, and sensory richness.
Hermès offers a moment of quiet clarity, a space where objects breathe and speak softly through craft, weight, and intention. By allowing materials to reveal their own rhythm, through the curve of cedar, the shimmer of blown glass, or the warmth of cashmere, Hermès continues to assert that true luxury lies not in excess, but in the poetry of precision.
this was such a stunning space design at Palermo 10. Personally one of the best this season! Bravo Hermes! Now work on the design of the products please.