Hermès in "quest for the object" with 2025 Milan design week homeware installation

Stark white minimalism takes centre stage at Hermès's latest installation for Milan design week, which was created as a pensive backdrop for the brand's contrastingly colourful homeware collection.

A staple of Milan design week, Hermès's annual installation is once again on display at La Pelota – a former 1940s sports court and the location of previous projects including illuminated water tower-style paper structures and a stone-and-clay floor sculpture.

This year, Hermès artistic directors Charlotte Macaux Perelman and Alexis Fabris departed from past craft-heavy installations.

Instead, the long-time collaborator opted for oversized and "nearly colourless" white boxes as the scenography for the French fashion house's most recent homeware collection.

Suspended above white flooring, the plinth-style boxes project "halos of bright colour" that interrupt the otherwise sparse setting.

"To design an object, to make it, a box is needed," said Macaux Perelman. "The staging is a quest for the object."

The large boxes are characterised by various cutaways and alcoves, revealing the homeware collection arranged like precious museum artefacts across the large room.

Among the pieces was a lacquered rectilinear glass side table by London-based designer Tomás Alonso.

The furniture is crowned with a round Japanese cedar top, which moves on an axis and features a rose-hued inner pad finished in embossed leather.

Irish designer Nigel Peake created an intricately watercoloured 33-piece porcelain dinner service, arranged across one of the boxes as if poised for a grand meal.

Swathes of handwoven Hermès cashmere was hung from alcoves like artwork.

Mouth-blown glass vases were fitted with snug leather "jackets" clad with crisscrossed patterns that nod to traditional tartan horse blankets, referencing the brand's equestrian history.

Elsewhere, a throw by Paris-based artist Amer Musa revealed applique polka dots informed by children's games.

According to Macaux Perelman, the intentionally pared-back space was designed to ensure "objects, furniture and fabrics come alive".

"Like a sculptor's marble block, the box contains the object, the idea we have of it, and the dream it inspires," she said.

Across the city, exhibitions and installations are on display for Milan design week.

Clothing brand A-Poc Able Issey Miyake and design studio Atelier Oï have unveiled delicate lighting fashioned from wire and a single piece of off-white cloth while French designer Pierre Renart has created an American walnut and leather bench and a set of chairs for luxury brand Longchamp.

The Hermès collection is on display at La Pelota from 8 to 13 April 2025 as part of Milan design week. See our Milan design week 2025 guide on Dezeen Events Guide for information about the many other exhibitions, installations and talks taking place throughout the week.

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