The installation aims at featuring the SS17 women's shoe and bag collections designed by Pierre Hardy for Hermès to the press during Paris Fashion Week. Hermès has given Carte blanche to Mathias Kiss for this installation. The place is located in the basement of the Marine Museum in Paris, in a space shaped like a curved tunnel measuring 45 meters’ long and 8 meters’ wide. 7 great vaults structure the whole space. Originally coloured in night blue, the vaults have been painted with a colour gradation from yellow in the entrance, to orange when we approach the background of the room. On each side of the room, between the vaults, the shoes are displayed on steles half-buried in sand mounds. 40 tons of sand have been necessary to cover the needed areas. At the end of the tunnel, a partition wall that fits “in negative” the shape of the vault curves has been erected. It is painted in deep red. When we bypass this wall, we access a smaller space, plunged in total darkness where some vertical steles and rectangular arches stand. Covered with mirrors, these shelves display the collection of bags.
UNDER THE SUN
MATHIAS KISS

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Designer
MATHIAS KISS
Client
HERMÈS
Floor area
425.00 ㎡
Completion
2016