Every April for the past fifteen years, La Pelota on Via Palermo has been the one address at Milan Design Week that everyone puts first on their list. Hermès Maison returns without fail, and without noise. This year, Artistic Directors Charlotte Macaux Perelman and Alexis Fabry transformed the cavernous former sports court into something resembling a city. Plaster and beechwood volumes arranged in a loose grid, carrying a single object each and surrounded by deliberate space. The emptiness was the argument. Three new pieces made it worth having.
Hermès Maison Builds the Week's Most Talked-About Table
The Stadium d'Hermès table is the piece everyone stopped at. Imagined by British design duo Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby. iIts figure-of-eight top reads from above like a racetrack or a show-jumping course. Made entirely in marble marquetry, Carrara Venato in fine grey and Verde Alpi in deep green. Its slim legs carry a two-tone Jumping motif that nods directly to the Maison's equestrian roots. The all-stone construction feels, against all logic, light. A loop of track frozen mid-race.
Alongside the table, the Palladion d'Hermès introduced a new line of home objects: a centerpiece, a jug, and vases in hammered palladium-plated metal combined with lizard, leather, horsehair, and cassia wood. Named after Pallas Athena, the pieces draw on the figure of the goddess as a protective talisman. The silversmith's hammer marks every surface, capturing light differently from every angle.
The plaids are the quietest piece in the collection and the most labor-intensive. Hand-woven in Nepal from cashmere. Sometimes threaded with linen, they begin with a reserve dyeing technique to protect certain areas of the fabric while color saturates the rest. The result is a surface where tone shifts subtly across the weave. Controlled and deliberate. From there, the edges are bordered and the panels assembled using needle embroidery, a finishing gesture that requires as much skill as the weaving itself. Featherlight in the hand, dense in meaning. A testament to Hermès' savoir-faire signature.
