Hermès’ Pierre-Alexis Dumas on curating the house’s breathtaking new London outpost

The new Maison Hermès, on London’s New Bond Street, is one of the largest in the Parisian house’s network, an extraordinary feat of construction and craft that has been 17 years in the making (the premises were purchased by Hermès in 2009). By combining six Grade II-listed buildings, dating back to 1769, the store encompasses five floors, two roof terraces and 55 rooms, each with a distinctive design scheme that reflects their contents. The ambitious interior project was entrusted to Rena Dumas Architecture Intérieure, under the artistic direction of Denis Montel, and mines house codes of creativity, imagination and play.

New ornamentation, colour and décor, much of it sourced in the UK or commissioned from British craftsmen and artists, includes boiserie shaped in straw and horsehair marquetry; textured wall coverings made in Lancashire; panels of patinated copper; hand-finished walls in powder pink; hexagonal patterned parquet in oak; and carpeting created to reflect the cherrywood-panelled ceilings or patterned with English floral motifs.

Pierre-Alexis Dumas on Hermès’ new London Maison

These one-of-a-kind finishes and details sit side by side with historic Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian elements from the original interiors, while the space is decorated with more than 500 unique artworks, selected for the address by Pierre-Alexis Dumas, artistic director of Hermès and a descendant of the company’s founder.

Dumas drew from five sources for the project: the Emile Hermès Collection, the Hermès Collection of Contemporary Photographs, the Hermès Contemporary Creations Collection, the Antoine Platteau Display Collection, and the house’s drawings and graphic design studio. Two site-specific works, by British artist Jessica Wetherly and London-based illustrator Katie Scott, were also commissioned for the space. To mark the opening, Dumas spoke to us about this unique curation project.

What is the symbolic meaning behind using the word ‘Maison’ for Hermès?

It literally means the home of the Hermès family. Émile Hermès turned the family home in Paris into a ‘Maison’ when he opened the Faubourg Saint-Honoré store in 1926, as it is today. The Faubourg store is my ultimate reference; it’s the root, it’s the modern tree. But it is a Maison because it has a soul. A Maison is, for us, much more than just a display of objects. The goal is to give character to the space, and make people feel like you are in someone’s home.

Why did you choose London for the sixth Maison [after Paris, New York, Tokyo, Seoul and Shanghai]?

We make them when we find the right place. There was the opportunity to acquire the leasehold of these six buildings 17 years ago, and there was no doubt that one day we would have a Maison in London.

What was your point of departure when you began to furnish the Maison with art and photography?

My starting point was the cultural context. We are here in London in the UK as a French house. I was brought up and educated by my father [Jean-Louis Dumas, former president of Hermès] with the idea that wherever we go, we have to create a dialogue. We cannot come as conquerors and just impose the brand as it is. Then there is the zoning of the store, which area will be dedicated to which métier. Because then we can fine-tune and start to have a dialogue between the works and what is being shown. My grandfather, Robert Dumas, used to say that Hermès is the most British French house. I tried to reflect this by paying homage to the British culture.

Émile Hermès [the grandson of founder Thierry Hermès] started collecting at the age of 12, and his collection of objects and curiosities became the foundation of the Émile Hermès Collection. Why is this important at Hermès?

We never stopped collecting. In 1951, my grandfather continued, and then my father and uncles did so too, and it continues today – it’s never been interrupted. I say that because when we pick a new painting, I feel connected to my ancestors.

You have selected six works from the drawings and graphic design studio, including the beautiful leather panel on the first floor, to display in the Maison. Last summer, you said ‘dessin’, or drawing, is the heart of Hermès. Can you elaborate on that?

Drawing is the beginning of all creation; you have to draw your ideas. I can’t stress enough how drawing and designing are at the heart of a creative house. It’s a medium that is beautiful in itself. And I also think that in leather craft, we draw with stitching; the line of stitching is the equivalent of the pencil. This is why, for the new Maison, we asked a craftsman to transfer the drawing of a scarf into stitching on leather.

The scarf pattern stitched on leather is reminiscent of your 2010 offering for our Wallpaper* Handmade project: an iPad case and headphone case in Rouge Hermès Swift calfskin. You sent us a beautiful panel of leather with our asterisk hand-stitched. Do you remember making this piece?

I was looking at it the other day. Did you see the console and turntable? [Displayed on the third floor, they were created by Ateliers Horizons, the special métier at Hermès that creates unique objects and bespoke projects]. I told the team: it all started with Wallpaper* 16 years ago. We were really visionary then.

The artworks create a kind of visual narrative. What journey do you imagine for visitors?

I want them to get lost. It’s a labyrinth. We intended for it to be that there are too many things for people to look at so they’re going to have to choose for themselves. We’re in a home, so you don’t label the name of the artist or the name of the work. If something is intriguing, then you have to ask.

There are British coastal landscapes by artist Tom Hammick and photographer Jamie Hawkesworth, as well as by French photographer Aurore Bagarry. Why was it important to have both countries represented in this way?

We are a French house in London, so I asked my team to find contemporary British photographers that specialise in themes that we like. We love landscape photography, but it’s a vast subject. It was really to engage in a dialogue between both cultures. We came with a French eye to choose works from British artists.

Was there a significance to selecting artworks that reflect local culture, such as Magnum photographer Stuart Franklin’s Household Cavalry image?

When I was living in the UK, from 1998-2003, I commissioned a photographer to do a series of images for Le Monde d’Hermès [the in-house magazine] of the Household Cavalry. Then they showed me the Stuart Franklin image at the acquisition committee, and I thought that was part of the commission that I did 25 years ago, but it wasn’t. And at that time, I had met a young officer of the Household Cavalry who explained to me the work involved every day to shine his boots, which is an obsession, apparently. I was really impressed by the technique of getting the boots perfectly polished every day. The photo reminded me of that. There’s something similar at Hermès. We’re talking about being a perfectionist.

What was the brief given to Katie Scott for her site-specific artwork, an imaginary orangerie in the perfume and beauty area on the ground floor?

We’ve been working with Katie for ten years now. She was always very serious – in French, we could describe her as ‘faussement sage’ [‘falsely wise’]. For me, I like to push people towards their own eccentricity. I wanted each department to have its own character, like in a British home, in the way that the British are masters of colour. I told her I wanted to feel like a child. I want to go into that space and feel its magic; a little bit like Alice in Wonderland, a place where you lose a sense of reality and you enter a poetic space of wonder. What she accomplished went beyond my expectations.

What drew you to commission Jessica Wetherly, who created a lifesize rocking horse sculpture, mounted on wheels, for the Maison’s atrium?

I wanted to invite a young artist to make a piece that would be completely arbitrary, to display in the atrium, the heart of the store. Jessica and I got along well; she’s a very engaging, hardworking, creative artist. She came to our Paris offices to learn more about Hermès. I let her wander around, and she picked up a little glass horse on wheels, a toy, very delicate, from the 19th century, and she came back to me, and she said she wanted to do it big. Losing our sense of scale is childlike, an invitation to dream, to play. It also makes the space less intimidating, especially in contrast to the spiral staircase, and serves as a reminder that the horse was our first client.

The new Hermès Maison is at 166 New Bond Street, London W1.

A version of this article appears in the September 2026 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, available now in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.