Video: A glimpse inside Hermès’ carnivalesque ’Women’s Universe’ in New York
For a company founded back in 1837, Hermès sure knows how to throw a party. The excuse: bringing its women's Autumn/Winter 2014 runway show to the Big Apple. The result: a raucous and wondrous evening that paid tribute to the luxury house's heritage and creativity.
Taking up in the uninhabited lobby of the former JP Morgan building at 23 Wall Street, right opposite the New York Stock Exchange, Hermès created a weaving labyrinth of installations, each devoted to a different aspect of its offerings. In one, floating female hands served flutes of champagne from behind a circular bar resembling a stack of enamel bracelets, their wrists laden with bracelets themselves.
Another room embraced an equestrian theme, with displays of riding gear from the Hermès archive arranged adjacent to a horse race carnival game, and a carousel themed photo booth - Martha Stewart even had a go.
A giant light bulb shoe signalled the entrance to a showcase of Pierre Hardy's footwear creations for the house, while an all-white bar, adorned with paper flowers, focused on its latest fragrance, Jour d' Hermès Absolu. The whimsical world lasted just for one night. Here's a peek at what else it had in store.
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
Pei-Ru Keh is a former US Editor at Wallpaper*. Born and raised in Singapore, she has been a New Yorker since 2013. Pei-Ru held various titles at Wallpaper* between 2007 and 2023. She reports on design, tech, art, architecture, fashion, beauty and lifestyle happenings in the United States, both in print and digitally. Pei-Ru took a key role in championing diversity and representation within Wallpaper's content pillars, actively seeking out stories that reflect a wide range of perspectives. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children, and is currently learning how to drive.
-
This picky customer finds ‘perfection’ at Nipotina, Mayfair’s new pizza and pasta joint
Wallpaper* contributing editor Nick Vinson reviews Nipotina, a new Italian restaurant in London offering a carefully edited menu of traditional dishes
By Nick Vinson Published
-
Giant cats, Madonna wigs, pints of Guinness: seven objects that tell the story of fashion in 2024
These objects tell an unconventional story of style in 2024, a year when the ephemera that populated designers’ universes was as intriguing as the collections themselves
By Jack Moss Published
-
How 2024 brought beauty and fashion closer than ever before
2024 was a year when beauty and fashion got closer than ever before, with runway moments, collaborations and key launches setting the scene for 2025 and beyond
By Mahoro Seward Published
-
‘If someone says no, you’re talking to the wrong person’: how make-up artist Marcelo Gutierrez created his own universe in New York
Fresh from publishing his first book ‘Nothing Precious’, Marcelo Gutierrez speaks with Mary Cleary about his friends, collaborators and making it as a young creative in New York City
By Mary Cleary Published
-
Olfactory Art Keller: the New York gallery exhibiting the smell of vintage perfume, blossoming lilacs and last night’s shame
Olfactory Art Keller is a Manhattan-based gallery space dedicated to exhibiting scent as art. Founder Dr Andreas Keller speaks with Lara Johnson-Wheeler about the project, which doesn’t shy away from the ‘unpleasant’
By Lara Johnson-Wheeler Published
-
Kohler plunges into the world of wellness with an ice bath for your home
Kohler has teamed up with Remedy Place to design an ice bath for the home, marking the brand’s first move into the wellness space
By Kelsey Mulvey Published
-
‘Remembering without nostalgia’: Giorgio Armani presents his S/S 2025 collection in New York
Giorgio Armani returned to New York for his S/S 2025 show, which coincided with the opening of a flagship boutique on Madison Avenue
By Hannah Tindle Published
-
Hermès Beauty’s eye and lip pencils invite playfulness with colour and texture
Hermès Beauty’s creative director Gregoris Pyrpylis has added to the ‘Trait d’Hermès’ collection with a set of eye and lip liners in kaleidoscopic colours. Here, he speaks to Wallpaper* about their playful design
By Hannah Tindle Published
-
Discothèque perfumes evoke the scent of Tokyo in the year 2000
As Discothèque gets ready to launch its first perfume collection, Mary Cleary catches up with the brand’s founders
By Mary Cleary Published
-
The story behind Hermès’ ‘Barénia’, a perfume that took nearly ten years to make
Hermès’ ‘Barénia’ is the house’s first-ever chypre fragrance. Christine Nagel tells Wallpaper* why it was almost ten years in the making
By Hannah Tindle Published
-
Fashion’s favourite bookstore, Climax, opens a ‘sexy, angry’ New York outpost
Wallpaper* catches up with Isabella Burley, founder of Climax, as she inaugurates a New York outpost of the cult bookstore and showcases a playful new collaboration with fashion label Chopova Lowena
By Mary Cleary Published