Scarves for the man about town
The scarf is the new tie this season at Hermes with men silk scarves for spring and summer 2017 honouring the brand’s annual theme “The sense of the object” through eight distinctive themes.
They include the “Les Bains d ’Hermes” print, inspired by the stepwells of Rajasthan and filled with more than 100 people playing, bathing, or calling out to one another. The scene is imagined by designer Ugo Gattoni, who created the Hippopolis scarf for the autumn-winter 2015 collection.
The “Caducee Rock” tie and dye print comes in a summer version for an even more “rock” effect. The original design by Japanese designer Daiske Nomura, initially created for the autumn-winter 2015 collection, reinterprets the caduceus, an attribute of the god Hermes in Greek mythology, who notably has the power to heal snakebites. The Caducee Rock design is produced by flatbed printing on white silk twill. Little knots are tied in the scarf by hand, which is then plunged into a dye bath. The knots are then undone to make the unique tie-dye effect appear on each scarf. This technique is also used on several pieces from Veronique Nichanian’s ready-to-wear collection.
The two-coloured “Palm Springs” scarf enlivens the range of men’s ready-to-wear colours by playing with sulphur, magenta, cobalt and baobab. It takes its inspiration from the “Color Field” painting art movement born in New York in the 1940s. Its colours bring to mind a Californian sunset. The printing technique used gives way to the haphazard and makes every scarf unique; the two colours are put into the same frame before spreading out and meeting in the middle.
The “Route 24” wool-and-silk scarf boasts a print drawn entirely with a ballpoint pen by Elias Kafouros, the Greek artist who created the “And the winner is…” scarf for the Autumn/Winter 2016 collection, inviting us on a motor ride in search of new horizons.
The “Imprimeur fou” plays with the frameworks of the Washington’s carriage design by Caty Latham created in 1978 and regularly seen in Hermes’ women’s silk collections. It is inspired by the watercolour signed by J Robert Hart in 1792, representing a “section of George Washington’s carriage” that escorted him from his New York residence to Federal Hall, shortly after being elected the first President of the United States of America in 1789.
And for the second season, the lozenge in printed cashmere and silk takes on the Imprimeur fou – Sequences design of the fringed 140 scarf in cashmere and silk from the autumn-winter 2012 collection. This Imprimeur fou plays with the frameworks of the Sequences design created by Caty Latham in 1984, depicting the horse in all of its states.
