“A shadow is rarely pure black,” says Pierre Hardy, inventive director of Hermès jewellery. “It takes coloration, relying on the sunshine supply.” Citing artists like Caravaggio, whose use of chiaroscuro took the method to a brand new stage, in addition to much less obvious practitioners of the fashion, reminiscent of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, Hardy is referring to his newest excessive jewellery assortment, Les Jeux de l’ombre, which simply arrived stateside after debuting in Paris this summer time. “My favourite painter of all time is Caravaggio,” continues the designer. A local Parisian, Hardy studied the plastic arts at L’Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan earlier than starting his skilled profession designing footwear at Christian Dior. In 1990 he was recruited to affix Hermès to supervise footwear, and in 2001—two years after establishing his personal quirky shoe model—the French luxurious home added jewellery to his purview. His 2010 launch of Hermès’s Haute Bijouterie—excessive jewellery assortment—set the precedent for the maison to specific its codes through one-of-a-kind treasured gems and metallic items.

“Shadow helped [Caravaggio] dramatize and announce the topic, protecting the remainder of the background at midnight, specializing in the sunshine,” says Hardy, recalling the Italian Baroque artist’s Bacchus portray. However the classics weren’t the designer’s solely inspiration when he was creating the 53-piece assortment, which consists of Hermès motifs such because the whip and the chain, imagined as necklaces, bracelets, rings, and earrings. Most notably, every object’s settings characteristic an extra layer of gems meant to imitate the shadow the piece would make when solid in gentle.

Colour in Les Jeux de l’ombre is revealed in a variety of stones Hardy says had been typically chosen for his or her saturation of hue fairly than their provenance. He made a concerted effort, in truth, to keep away from a basic gemstone combo (ruby, blue sapphire, emerald, and white diamond) explaining, “I wanted to create an iconic coloration vary for Hermès, which is known for its use of coloration in silks, leathers, and sweetness. The coloration discipline and shades are very particular.”

In the identical breath, the designer is fast to dispel any mushy or murky notions of shade. “Nothing is extra graphic than a silhouette,” he confirms. “The topic has many impressions: coloration, motion, and shades, however the shadow is a graphic cutoff that offers a lot data. It’s very exact in its precise form.” To recreate his shadows, Hardy indulged in pavé black diamonds on a sequence design created from white diamonds, and used black enamel and jade to imitate what the stones themselves solid. He found the impact whereas sourcing gems, cataloging their density and transparency, and capturing their likenesses on his cell phone. “The white gentle produced a colourful prism reflection; it was magic and delightful, like a rainbow,” Hardy explains. “My iPhone and iPad had been essential instruments throughout the design course of.”

It was particularly noticeable with spessartite garnets and yellow diamonds utilized in uncooked, unpolished, uncut states, and paired with an interpretation of the shadow through ombré pavé on rings or dangling streams on earrings, each created from coloured diamonds. Hardy can’t pinpoint the precise second he realized the theme of the brand new assortment, however the completed items’s transformation from thought to actuality was what left a poignant impression. “What’s thrilling about excessive jewellery is that you just create it as soon as; you are able to do something as soon as,” he says. “There are only a few creations the place you possibly can say nothing is inconceivable.”

The sentiment additionally describes how he helped conceive Les Jeux de l’ombre’s introductory presentation this fall in New York. Upon discovering the choreographic work of Lina Lapelyté, the designer had an concept that recalled Marilyn Monroe’s iconic dance quantity in Gents Favor Blondes. “I like the sensation of pink, purple, and black—very vibrant and darkish on the identical time,” he explains. “It’s very theatrical and grand, however I wished it to be extra trendy and cooler.”

Given inventive rein to interpret the jewels, Lapelyté and her 18-member troupe imagined a composition that was far more intimate and engaged shadow theater staging. “It was extra like a cabaret, the place the proximity between the stage and spectator is lessened. It’s fairly shut, so you would see the jewellery,” he remembers. Hardy stops wanting calling it a collaboration. “Every individual has their job,” Hardy continues. “When asking an artist to create and signal a chunk, directing it didn’t come to my thoughts.” Contemplating the designer pursued dance in a previous life, his capability to step again reinforces the humility he’s identified for and even supplied him a little bit of a shock: “The attention-grabbing result’s the shock within the assembly of the 2 totally different fantasies, characters, and factors of view. The confrontation that occurred is one thing that I couldn’t anticipate.”

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