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The new Hermès Rive Gauche

The third Paris store by Hermès has been housed in a 1930s pool. It's a spectacular volume with a dip into contemporaneity.

That Hermès was renovating a space on the Left Bank for its third Paris store was well-known for several months to luxury-industry insiders, who immediately sought news about the operation in order to find available space in the same neighborhood. Of course. Because wherever the most atypical luxury brand in the current landscape goes, business booms. Because Hermès boasts a stellar history that began over 170 years ago and because it remains securely in the hands of family members who own 73.4% of its capital and who also head up art direction. That Hermès is undoubtedly a successful model is confirmed by the data reported in the third quarter in a year that few will record as memorable: a 30.5% increase in turnover and the consequent forecast of a 15% increase in annual sales. That the key to its success is a strategy based on the cult of quality and beauty continued smoothly without half-measures or bending to the fashion of the moment, in all areas of company activity, is also well-known. That's why even the opening of a new store catalyzes attention. The reasons for the interest in Hermès Rive Gauche can thus be traced both to the company's strategic profile - because it might create a new outpost for another Parisian luxury pole - but also to the project itself in a much stricter sense; the new store is a step towards a more contemporary vision both of interior architecture as well as of the store's concept. Montel Denis, head of the Rdai office, who conceived the project for the reconversion of the former Art Deco Lutetia pool, accurately highlights these factors. "The Hermès store at 24 Faubourg Saint-Honoré" he says, "was completely renovated in 1926, so we might say that it is was done almost at the same time as the Lutetia pool. But while, in that case, Hermès remained true to its roots, when crossing the Seine, the company has also made a time trip across the twentieth century. In rue de Sevres we understood how Hermès architecture "on water" might become proudly contemporary."

The staircase, a “fourth hut”, forms the link between the entrance and the open space of the swimming pool (photo Michel Denancé).

Opened in 1935 and closed in 1970, the Lutetia pool underwent profound changes from 1978 until 1998 with the installation of the showroom for the pret-à-porter duo Elie and Jacqueline Jacobson before being designated a national landmark in 2005. The Rdai project had to face the preservation criteria imposed by the Fine Arts commission, but this factor did not hinder the new project which sought to enhance the importance of the past while introducing a new operation by "addition."

The imposing balustrades of the 4 metres wide staircase are made from braided slats of wood, with banisters sheathed in bull-calf leather (photo Bruno Clergue).

The building's original structure was respected (the pool was covered with a slab of composite material but left intact); the decorative elements on the existing floors, walls and columns were maintained and restored when necessary. The mosaics made of fragments of enamel, glass and ceramics are still everywhere, in white, beige, light green, gray, silver, gold, and a light gray granite with green marble inserts covering almost the entire floor surface, while on the pool area walls are fragments of white, beige, ochre and green tiles mounted in an opus incertum pattern.

The existing ornamental elements on the floors and the walls have been preserved and restored (photo Bruno Clergue).

In addition to choosing "aquatic" colors with reflective surfaces in order to underline the references to the pool, projections made with the use of the lighting system are cast on the ceiling. Even the architectural elements that were specifically designed for the store refer to the fluidity of water; they are light and flexible and can be moved to change the "set design." The new "tents" (or huts, nests, houses - everyone finds his or her own image) help break down this perfect Art Deco profile; three organically shaped pavilions in intertwined wood in different shapes and sizes are slated for the Home collection which, for the store's opening, included a reissue of a selection of furniture by 1920s and 30s interior decorator, Jean-Michel Frank.

The floors, the columns, the staircases are covered in mosaics, broken tiles or granito (photo Bruno Clergue).

"I was inspired by the whale skeletons that I saw at the Natural History Museum in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris," says Montel, "but also by movable travel structures and by miniature ships in bottles." The image presented to the eyes of the visitor, who enters from a very simple (but smart) entry and proceeds through the space that has been visually reduced in relation to the original (with operations on the ceiling and walls), is truly intense.

The huts that house the Hermès furniture collections are self-supporting structures constructed in ash wood and rest on a system of woven wooden laths (profile 6 x 4cm) with a double radius of curves (photo Michel Denancé).

The spatial configuration definitely helps produce the final result: the store occupies over 2,155 square meters, of which 1470 are display areas mostly concentrated in the large central atrium that takes up about 1000 square meters. "We needed spaces in which to present the entire range of our products;" says Pierre-Alexis Dumas, "fewer but larger stores." The next step in this strategic direction is Shanghai, where a 1930s building is being renovated; it should be ready in 2013.

For the store opening the company presented a reissue of a selection of furniture by 1920s and 30s interior decorator, Jean-Michel Frank (photo Michel Denancé).

The immersion in the Hermès world proposed by the designers and by company management is complete. The extension of the "total look" concept, the suggestion of a lifestyle, which over the years led the company to expand its array of products (to perfumes, jewelry, watches, men's and women's fashion, leather goods, shoes, furniture) has also been extended to services, new 'métiers,' which, in the Rive Gauche Hermès, are added to the company's traditional ones.

The Lutetia pool interpreted by the illustrator Martin Veyron. Opened in 1935, it was closed in 1970; on 1978 it was transformed into a showroom, which closed in 1998, and then listed since 2005 (photo Michel Denancé).

"We made room for new friends," as the creative director Pierre-Alexis Dumas calls them. The first, in order of appearance, is florist Baptiste Pitou, whose flowers greet visitors at the entrance; then come the library Chaine d'encre and the Le Plongeoir tearoom (which also serves light meals), both placed on the upper floors on the edge of the atrium that housed the pool. So here are three more good reasons to cross the Seine and dive into this new concept store.

Rising to more than 9 metres in height, the three huts lean progressively, as if attracted by the skylights (photo Bruno Clergue).

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The new Hermès Rive Gauche

The third Paris store by Hermès has been housed in a 1930s pool. It's a spectacular volume with a dip into contemporaneity.

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