French fashion house Hermès has designed an installation that uses reclaimed bricks, slate, marble and terracotta to draw attention to the brand's artisan roots at Milan design week.
The brand's annual installation, which has previously featured lantern-like light structures and latticed iron cages, this year drew visitors' attention downwards.
Spread across the floor of the La Pelota venue in Milan, Hermès home artistic directors Charlotte Macaux Perelman and Alexis Fabry created a patterned surface made up of over twenty different organic materials.
Bricks and terracotta are among the materials used for the Hermès installation
The materials, which include stone, clay, earth, soil and volcanic rocks, were divided by a walking path and assembled in patterns that were inspired by a jockey silk blouse from the house's archive. "It's a question of how to create a graphism, a pattern, using lots of different materials," Perelman told Dezeen.
The materials used for the installation were all sourced from within an hour's distance from Milan and hand-laid, a process that took four weeks in total.
The floor was hand-laid over four weeks
Following Milan design week, the installation will be dismantled with the materials sent back to the local suppliers to be reused and recycled.
"These are all reclaimed materials that we recycled; I contacted many suppliers to get these materials which already existed," Perelman said.
Slate and other types of stone form patter...