At Dubai Mall, we stepped into the world of Petit h, Hermès’ curious laboratory of creation, and found ourselves looking at beautiful objects from the wrong end of the process. Or perhaps, the right one. Petit h begins with what already exists: a piece of leather, a remnant of silk, a fragment of porcelain, crystal or fabric that has no place in the collections, but still has a story left to tell. Rather than beginning with a sketch and searching for the material to realise it, the material comes first, and the idea follows. It is what Hermès calls “creation in reverse”, bringing together artisans, artists and designers to give these dormant materials another life.
Every passage through the exhibition brought another surprise. There were bags recognisable by their most iconic silhouettes, but reimagined through playful patchworks of different leathers, each fragment revealing a different texture, colour or memory. Then came toys, speakers, slippers, chairs and tables, all born from materials that might otherwise have been left behind. And, of course, the bag charms: those wonderfully irresistible little characters that make you stop, look twice and inevitably imagine which one might find its way onto your own bag.
What makes Petit H particularly fascinating is that sustainability is not presented as an instruction, but as a creative possibility. A crease, an irregularity, an offcut or an unexpected leftover is not something to disguise. It becomes the starting point. The artisans work alongside designers and artists, allowing the material to dictate what it might become. As Godefroy de Virieu, Creative Director of petit h, explains, “We don’t actually know where we will go when we start working. We follow the material, we follow the idea, we follow the dialogue.”
Perhaps that is what makes the exhibition so enjoyable. You enter expecting to see what can be made from something beautiful and leave thinking about what beauty can be found in what has already been made. Petit h turns the traditional creative process on its head, beginning with the material and allowing imagination to catch up. In doing so, it makes a rather compelling case for looking at what we already have a little differently.
