Hermès stages home collections in white suspended boxes in milan

Hermès RETURNS TO LA PELOTA FOR Milan Design Week 2025

Hermès returns to La Pelota for Milan Design Week 2025, presenting its new home creations in a white, nearly colorless landscape of suspended boxes projecting halos of bright colours onto the ground. On view for the public from Wednesday, April 9th, to Sunday, April 13th, in the heart of Brera, the new Hermès collections spotlight the poetics of glass — explored here through a range of artisanal techniques that highlight its texture, transparency, and depth.

As every year, the scenography is designed by Charlotte Macaux Perelman, architect and artistic director of Hermès collections for the home with Alexis Fabry. Contrary to the 2024 installation, which presented a study on materiality with a focus on earthy, raw materials, this year the interior of La Pelota immerses visitors in a light, ethereal space

that feels like being suspended between the clouds. The experience encourages a slower pace, and rather than revealing everything at once, the partially enclosed display zones discretely reveal glimpses of Hermès’ latest collection only in part. Contained within them, the vases, jugs, tables, trays, and throws accentuate transparency, texture, and capacity for emotion.

designboom steps inside the Hermès showcase ahead of the public opening to speak with Charlotte Macaux Perelman and Alexis Fabry about the Maison’s new collections and the scenography at La Pelota. ‘There is no real, defined space, there’s just the reflection,’ Macaux Perelman tells us. ‘It’s about the glow, the aura, the emotional presence of these objects that goes beyond their actual shape.’ Read on as we explore how Hermès’ ease with ‘silent virtuosity’ gave way for this new collection to be realized, and how these intangible concepts were spatially translated in the immersive installation at Milan Design Week.

installation images by Maxime Verret, courtesy of Hermès

A SCENOGRAPHY OF WHITE SUSPENDED BOXES AND BRIGHT COLOR HALOS

Hermès’ showcase at this year’s Milan Design Week transforms La Pelota into a quiet, almost weightless scenery, and distills the act of discovery into a delicate kind of ritual. Set within a white landscape, the suspended volumes, each housing the new Hermès home creations, emmit a colorful glow at their base. These halos, gentle and precise, serve as the only markers in the space, turning the floor into a shifting grid of light.

This year, the focus turns to materiality, and particularly glass. Shaped using techniques such as blowing, casing, and fusing, the glass pieces in the collection explore subtle shifts in opacity, thickness, and hue. Casaque, for example, is a series of colored mouth-blown glasses cut by artisans to form striped and chequered patterns with infinite precision. Doublé d’Hermès alongside this presents oversized vases made of combined molten materials using the casing technique, superimposing up to seven successive layers of glass. A leather cuff wraps around it, contrasting the textures and tones of the glass base. The Pivot d’Hermès side tables by Tomás Alonso, meanwhile, feature lacquered glass painted in vibrant compositions. The rounded tabletop juxtaposes a rectilinear base, placing a round box in sugi (Japanese cedar), its band curved using an ancient Japanese technique and engaged in unexpected emotion.

Glass is joined by accents of leather, wood, and textile pieces — materials also chosen for the way they interact with light and space. In textile, the Striped Dye and H Partition throws have been crafted in complex compositions, with the latter by Amer Musa shaped from 24-carat gold powder applied to a fine, hand-woven cashmere chevron design in an ivory colour. Read on for our full interview with Charlotte Macaux Perelman and Alexis Fabry where we discuss the various artisanal glassmaking techniques that brought the collection to life, Hermès’ philosophy, and their journey so far as they celebrate a decade of steering the creative direction of Hermès Home Collections.

Points et plans by Amer Musa | 100% hand-woven cashmere, appliqué on ikat-woven stripes

INTERVIEW WITH Charlotte Macaux Perelman and Alexis Fabry

designboom (DB): The idea of the ‘box’ representing the latent object is quite poetic. Can you elaborate on how this abstract idea translates into the tangible design process for the new collections? And how do the themes of transparency and light inform this year’s scenography?

Charlotte Macaux Perelman (CMP): Every time we leave Milan, on the plane back we’re already talking about ideas for the following year. That’s exactly what happened this time too.

Last year, we spoke of materiality – everything based on the land, the ground. This year, the subject is not as quantifiable. It’s about glow, aura, the emotional presence of these objects that goes beyond their actual shape. We weren’t sure we were going to be successful in conveying that, and the scenography really highlighted the fact that there is no real, defined space. There’s just the reflection. And so, there’s the search for an emotional presence, but this is something you can’t really calculate.

Pivot d’Hermès side table by Tomás Alonso | colored lacquered glass, pivoting round box in sugi (Japanese cedar), inner pad in rose thé Epsom calfskin

DB: It’s interesting to see this contrast with last year’s darker, earthier scenography. This is year we see much more lightness and color. In the collection itself, too. Can you elaborate on the collection’s exploration of various artisanal glassmaking techniques that made this possible? Which specific qualities of glass drew you to this material?

Alexis Fabry (AF): Here, we see to what extent the envelope that is the frame which surrounds an object is important. I don’t believe that this year’s collection is more varied, more colored than that of other years, but it is in comparison to the whiteness of the context that they appear to be. So, this is proof that context is important for a design object.

As for the glass… It’s funny, but we realized that there were many different techniques used this year to create these objects. It’s not that we looked for them. It’s just that the objects themselves requested specific know-hows which we had to look for in Italy and in France. Each master glassmaker had their own specific requirements. For instance, we opted for semi-industrial glass for the lower part of Tomás Alonso’s tables.

lacquered glass topped with sugi (Japanese cedar)

DB: Can you walk us through your collaboration with the glassmakers? How did the process evolve and how much of the final outcome is defined by the technique itself?

CMP: I believe that that is why all these objects are all so very different. We respected the specific know-hows, and we had to look for experts in Italy who knew how to carry out this fusion technique and work with the different colors. For example, for one of the glassworks, we have different layers superimposed. We first have the transparent base, and then on top, we have the other colored layers, and cut through reveal parts of the colored section.

So, the results depend on the technique. It was a collaborative process between the team and the craftsmen. All the objects are different, so we had to look for the right artisan in order to achieve this different quality of work. And they responded, therefore, to the need to translate loyally the design.

Doublé d’Hermès vase, by Studio Hermès | mouth-blown colored glass, cuff in Epsom and Evercolor calfskin

DB: That kind of intricate process seems to extend to the rest of the collection, and not just the glass pieces. You mentioned earlier during the tour how long it takes to work with artisans across the collection, even when the final result looks effortless. Could you speak a bit more about about that?

CMP: What’s really great about Hermès is that time is our ally, and that’s the real luxury. We can wait, and we have the time we can offer to our craftsmen and to their work.

AF: This morning we were actually trying to list all the different features and characteristics of the collection, and your question touches on one of them — virtuosity. The virtuous nature of the object of the craft is not looked for as an end to itself. It is the know-how, which indicates what can be achieved in this way, and letting that guide the result. So, we’re not exalting the demonstration of the technique in itself.

CMP: A good example of this is the striped throw. It’s been hand-spun and woven, using three different sets of stripes. It’s also been dip-dyed using a special method that puts different colors on each side, which then interact with the woven patterns. You don’t realize what’s dye and what’s weaving. It’s actually a very complicated technique involving superimposed treatments, careful knotting… We hope people feel that richness, even if they don’t immediately see the labor behind it.

AF: In Hermès we feel very much at ease with this silent virtuosity. We just know that we’ve created the right objects. We’re happy with that and everything else is just beyond us.

Casaque glasses

DB: To end, you’ve been at the creative wheel of Hermès Home Collections for a decade now. How would you reflect on your journey so far? How do you see the collection evolving in the coming years?

CMP: There are so many different know-hows — for textile, porcelain, lacquer, wood, and indeed glass. We have always been obsessed with these different articulations.

And what obsesses us now? Well, we’ve always said that we wanted to create different things with, however, the same values. So along this path now, for the future, we’re perhaps tempted to do the opposite of what we used to do at the beginning which was harmonizing and articulating. Now, we’re interested in perhaps introducing novelties, even accidents. We want to be surprised by the work.

AF: We also like to add layers to the process to make it more interesting and more abrasive. A good example is Tomás Alonso’s table. It arrived at just the right time, perhaps, as a few years ago, it might’ve been harder for us to accept because it balances craft with a more industrial model. Tomás is typically like a tightrope walker. In the past, we might have leaned more toward the craftsmanship approach. Now, we’re more open to that balance.

DB: It feels like a very subtle shift, this way of moving forward that doesn’t follow trends so much as it follows your own rhythm.

CMP: Yes, there’s no leitmotif because each object is unique. We try to do our work seriously, but at the same time, joyfully too, It’s got to be fun. We say what has not been said in the past and at the same time we try to be in harmony with Hermès.

AF: One of the characteristics of Hermes is that they encourage this joyful renewal. Pierre-Alexis Dumas pushes us in this direction, so we are free. There are no guidelines.

Striped Dye throw | 100% cashmere, spun, woven and dyed by hand, knotted ligatured fringes