Artic Life
According to legend, the nineteenth-century anthropologist Franz Boas observed that the Eskimo-Aleut languages have more than fifty words for “snow.” Most of these words have no translation into Indo-European languages, but this conceptual richness provides an entry point into our vision of “nature at full gallop” in the Arctic world. This is nature at its most wild. Here, human intervention is limited to the indigenous, native constructions that evolved to support human life at the extreme global poles: we see kayaks, snowshoes, igloos, rods and tools of rough natural materials, as well as winter plants and animals. Evocative scenes unfold upon fields of white, pristine and blank as fresh fallen snow. A subtle palette of whites, grays, slate blues, deep evergreens, dark earthen browns and blacks creates surreal mirages of winter. Here and there the neutral palette is shot through with the electric blue of compressed glacial ice, the yellow tongue of a flame, or a sudden flash of Aurora Borealis red. This is a world of ice: bergs and glaciers, sheets and blocks and crystals of ice, stalactites and stalagmites of ice, ice that is smooth here and ragged there, sculptural and tactile. We will create a common aesthetic language among all vitrines, using the same color palette, materials and textures. And within all of this Hermès accessories, scarves, footwear and prêt-à-porter lend a whisper of life, shapely and sensual, looming and floating like living figures in fleeting frozen memories and barely-remembered dreams.
