Pierre Hardy: “Creation is an act of mutual seduction.”

Hardy came to fashion through art, drawing and dance. “Drawing started before writing. Unconscious, really. Designers are often said to be introverted or self-absorbed. Looking back, I feel quite the opposite, of not having paid enough attention to what truly mattered at a very young age.” His notebooks are proof of that, far from the idle doodles of a child on holiday. “Every summer, a complete collection would take shape on the page. The clothes, the silhouettes, the accessories, the makeup, the hair.” At the same time, dance ran in the family; his mother taught it. He even joined a contemporary ballet company alongside his studies at the École Normale Supérieure de Cachan. “Dancing went on until 28, and I loved it. At some point, a choice had to be made. There’s no doing things by halves.” He earned the highest degree in visual arts, a rigorous examination engaging both hand and mind – from studio practice to art history, aesthetics and philosophy. Teaching followed naturally, first scenography at the theatre school École de la rue Blanche, then applied arts at École Duperré. “Missing teaching feels like missing an ideal, but it’s a question of time. It’s a profession that demands tremendous concentration and dedication. Following a student’s project means understanding them, reaching them where they are, sometimes where they don’t even know themselves.” Fashion arrived through conversation, almost by chance. “Friends worked in fashion and since drawing came naturally, helping with their files and portfolios felt obvious." Soon came illustrations for Vanity Fair Italia, Vogue Hommes International, La Mode en Peinture. Until one remark shifted everything: “Rather than illustrating other people's work, your own drawings could become collections.”

“I was lucky. I never had to send a résumé.”

He first drew for Cassandre, “a small luxury brand, the kind that flourished in the 1970s and no longer exists. There was a boutique on the rue Saint-Honoré and another in Japan.” For five years, he learned his craft there and discovered the workings of a human-scale house. Then a contact working at a styling agency joined the Dior studio and brought him along. “'You'll draw the shoes,’ she told me.” In 1987, Marc Bohan’s long reign as artistic director was drawing to a close. Hardy watched from the inside as Gianfranco Ferré arrived in 1989, his debut collection so masterful it earned him the Dé d'Or immediately and would stay until 1996. Moving from an intimate brand to the flagship of French luxury felt like trading a paddling pool for one that was Olympic-sized. “It was enormous. There was the boutique collection, the Japanese collection, the licences, Haute Couture... So much was learned there, because it was a highly structured House with its own mechanisms, expectations and logo.” Making beautiful shoes was no longer enough, this was about honouring a legacy. His path through fashion reads as a string of encounters that would make anyone who has ever laboured over a cover letter deeply envious. “In my entire career, I have never had a job interview with an HR department.”

“Hermès is a House with instinctive casting. It generates people who are genuinely a pleasure to work and dialogue with. Perhaps that’s why I've been there for so long.”

In 1990, Hardy pushed open a door he would never close again. At the time, the fashion world was shaken by the rise of the star designers: Nicolas Ghesquière, Marc Jacobs, Alexander McQueen and John Galliano were reshaping the landscape of luxury ready-to-wear. Jean-Louis Dumas, great-grandson of Émile-Maurice Hermès, who had led Hermès International from 1978 to 2006 and served as its artistic director, decided to take a different path. Known as the “poet-peasant,” he placed product before image, trust before notoriety. He chose Claude Brouet to head the studio. A legendary fashion journalist, she had spent 16 years at Elle and 18 at Marie Claire, where she served as fashion editor-in-chief until 1988 – 30 years embodying some of the very best of what French fashion press had to offer. “She had an incredible history in the press, and an intelligence, a taste, a culture of fashion that was immense.” It was a friend who let slip one day that the house was looking for someone to head up its shoe collections. “So I made an appointment and did ten drawings, just like that, you never know.” He found himself in a meeting with Claude Brouet herself, presenting what he thought could be a shoe collection for Hermès. “She said ‘I agree with you.’ It was settled in ten minutes.” He began with the women’s shoe collection, then a few years later took the men’s under his wing. “J.M. Weston had approached me and I mentioned it to Jean-Louis Dumas. He told me I could do it for the House. I was genuinely fond of him, quietly, because I held him in such high regard. He was an extraordinary man in his trust and his simplicity. He had an exceptional vitality that was destabilising because he was never where you expected him to be. He never asked the question you were hoping for and never answered the one you asked. He was an absolutely brilliant will-o'-the-wisp.” Jean-Louis Dumas passed away on 1 May 2010, aged 72.

“I have never worked from a collection plan. I don’t want people to think I'm on another planet, but that’s the truth.” Within a framework where excellence is an absolute imperative, he creates freely. “I have never made moodboards, I think they freeze ideas. Everything starts from a drawing.” At Hermès, the exceptional materials of the house reveal themselves – “fundamental, and that has never changed” – and he designs shoes that he then presents to whichever artistic director is in place. He has known them all, from Martin Margiela to Jean Paul Gaultier, from Véronique Nichanian to Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski, and now Grace Wales Bonner, recently appointed creative director of Hermès menswear. Among the many pieces created for the house, some have become absolute classics. In 1997, on the theme of “Africa,” he designed the Oran sandal – now an Hermès classic whose success has never stopped growing in the 40 years since. “It’s incalculable, unpredictable. An object that meets a moment, a place, an acquiescence, a desire. It creates a surprise and finds its way into people's daily lives.” He adds, amused: “Nobody will believe me, but the H shape was entirely unintentional. It was a geometric form that emerged from connecting three straps. The aim was a sandal that holds the foot while being as minimal and graphic as possible.”

“It's a world of boundless inner richness, ranging from the minimal to the baroque, the futuristic to the historic. The entrance to the Hermès universe narrows like a funnel, then opens onto immensity.”

Hardy has always known how to compartmentalise his mind as much as his diary. This need to multiply creative territories led him in 1999 to launch his own brand, of which Hermès became a minority shareholder in 2016. The launch was uncompromisingly radical: three colours – black, white and red – one heel, three heights, eight styles. “It wasn't exactly welcoming!” he says with a smile. Yet success was immediate, particularly in the United States. In Paris, Maria Luisa, a towering figure of Parisian fashion, a buyer and talent spotter who passed away in 2015, was his sole distributor. He has presented two collections a year ever since. Two years later, in 2001, he added yet another hat, not forgetting that he was still teaching in parallel, by joining Balenciaga alongside Nicolas Ghesquière, a collaboration that would last 12 years, until 2013.

“Drawing jewellery, teapots or lipsticks – it's all the same to me. What amuses and interests me is creating objects that last.”

In 2001, Jean-Louis Dumas offered him a new territory: Hermès jewellery. The proposition was as simple as all the others. “He simply said ‘I think you should.’ Some people will perhaps think I’m making it up, but that's really how it happened!” Hardy discovered this world as a complete novice. “There was a small, rather eclectic collection, a few iconic pieces such as the anchor chain or the Nausicaa bracelet designed by Jean-Louis Dumas himself, but no established collection in the sense we understand today.” He threw himself in with all his creative maturity and precise knowledge of the house’s heritage. “I tackled everything head on asking myself: if the idea of Hermès materialised in jewellery, took shape in metal or stone, what would that be?” The Métier grew – from the workshops to the design studio. In 2010, when the house ventured into Haute Joaillerie, he naturally took the reins. “Creation is stubborn. It rises, and if nothing blocks it, it reaches a level of sophistication and complexity that goes beyond what one can expect from a distribution collection. When you create a piece destined to be unique, you are even freer.” The House presents an Haute Joaillerie collection every two years.

In 2020, the Hermès made the same bold choice handing Hardy a domain he had never ventured into: beauty. “I loved it, it excited me because it was new. And I knew nothing about it.” This is precisely what draws him in: design is a conceptual question that applies to any object. “I always start from a drawing, asking myself how to materialise it,” he explains, absently lifting the insignificant sugar bowl from the café table, next to his cup. “If we tried to improve this object, what could I say? It’s a little presumptuous, but you need a touch of that arrogance to create or improve an object, to make it more appealing.” When asked to conceive the beauty equivalent of alphabet for Hermès, he found himself facing one of the most saturated markets he had ever worked with. “I did what I know how to do: reduce, reduce, reduce, to try to reach the essential. A radical form, colour as a strong signal, the durability of these refillable objects...” As with jewellery, he created a language he could handle and build upon. “Creation is an exercise in mutual seduction. It’s always about building the bridge that leads to the other. One never creates in the abstract, there are always people one wants to charm.”

Hardy never looks back. “I love projection and I often forget previous collections. I have no time for obsessives or collectors.” He found in drawing his antidote to boredom, in creation a motor that never runs dry. A broad smile escapes when person in a pair of trainers from his brand happens to walk through the door. “The recognition of something one has made oneself is immediate. It makes me happy every time.”

Reuben Attia