After hugely successful runs around the world (in Vienna, London and Toronto to name a few), Hermès at Work, a travelling exhibition that puts the French luxury brand's skilled craftspeople on full display, popped up on Sept. 20 in Vancouver.
The evening before the exhibition opening, a dinner was hosted at top Vancouver restaurant Cioppino's to welcome Guillaume de Seynes, Hermès' executive vice president of the manufacturing division and equity investments. He also happens to be a sixth-generation member of the Hermès family. Clients and friends of the brand convened around a large rectangular table in the restaurant's private space, and wine and conversation flowed, so much so that nobody seemed to notice Drake was dining in the other room. To my right was the evening's gracious host, Hermès Canada's president and CEO Jennifer Carter, and to my left, fashion plate Martine Argent, an actress and former model who's engaged to Francesco Aquilini, a local businessman whose holdings include the Vancouver Canucks. The table was dotted with familiar faces from Vancouver parties I've attended in the past, including the always elegant Ada Fung, who brought stylish pal Yvette Bell along for the swish sit down. Others around the table included actress Noureen Dewulf (her husband, Ryan Miller, plays for the Canucks), Maria Schaefer, a sixth-generation Hermès family member who worked in the brand's silk department, Vancouver style-setter and horse jumper Ling Qiu and Canadian show jumper Ben Asselin of Calgary, who is sponsored by Hermès. (Canadian Olympian Jonathan Asselin is his father and Nancy Southern, whose family founded the Calgary show jumping venue Spruce Meadows, is his mother.)
For the occasion of the unveiling of Hermès at Work, a big white tent was erected at Jack Pool Plaza on the water's edge of Coal Harbour. Inside de Seynes and Carter held court at the entrance of the tent, greeting guests as they made their way in to a space where the North Shore Mountains were the breathtaking backdrop for the party. Hermès craftspeople were scattered about the space demonstrating the handiwork for which the company is best known; a translator was on-hand for each station to help answer questions that onlookers put forward. Those in attendance on opening night, and those who stopped by in the subsequent days that the exhibition ran, had a chance to see just how their beloved Kelly bags are brought to life, how the saddles that started it all are stitched and how striking pieces of porcelain are painstakingly painted. A highlight for many was the section of the tent dedicated to scarves: It was an up-close look at how those iconic squares of silk go from pearly blank white canvases to joyfully hued wearable works of art though a mesmerizing process of flat-frame screen printing known, in homage to its roots in Lyon in the 1930s, as the "Lyonnaise method."
Guests on opening night came fully turned-out, some clutching the brand's coveted exotic skin bags while others donned a precious silk scarf. Champagne flowed and the party went on past the invite's stated 8 p.m. end time. Among those out: chef Ned Bell and his wife Kate Colley; television personality Monika Deol (who brought two of her four children along); real estate lawyer Neil Kornfeld; Army and Navy's Jacqui Cohen; Westbank Projects Corp. founder Ian Gillespie and his wife Stephanie Dong; newsman Mike Killeen and his wife, PR-pro Jill; Lululemon's director of innovation Brian Peterson; and the Consul General of France in Vancouver Jean-Christophe Fleury.