delphine denereaz weaves provencal memory into Hermes' winter windows in shanghai

"For the winter season of 2025, Hermès invites French artist Delphine Dénéréaz to design the festive windows of its Hermès Maison in Shanghai. Titled Aïgo, Flamo e Cacho Fio, the installation draws on Provençal winter rituals, the Gros Souper, the Cacho Fio, Epiphany, and translates them through weaving, collage, and light into a tactile landscape that bridges southern France and the birthplace of silk."

"Rather than staging a cultural contrast, Dénéréaz approaches the commission as a meeting point shaped by textile history. 'Provence and China are linked by a long textile history; here they do not confront each other as two foreign worlds, but rather meet through family traditions that anyone can understand,' she tells us. Silk, she notes, has traveled between these territories for centuries, and the Shanghai windows become a way to honor those exchange routes through materials and gesture."

"Based in Villedieu, Provence, Dénéréaz works from a former magnanerie, a repurposed silkworm mill. Her practice centers on lirette, a medieval weaving technique originating in North Africa and southern Europe, traditionally used to reuse fabric scraps. Torn, knotted, and recomposed, these fragments form dense, hyper-colored surfaces that hover between tapestry, architecture, and object. Dénéréaz describes lirette as existing 'between craft and magic,' though she is quick to demystify the term. 'Magic for me is not mystical: it comes from transformation,' she says. Each strip of fabric carries a previous life, a garment, a domestic gesture, a me"

For winter 2025, Hermès Maison in Shanghai presents Aïgo, Flamo e Cacho Fio, an installation drawing on Provençal winter rituals such as the Gros Souper, the Cacho Fio, and Epiphany. The project translates those rituals into tactile landscapes through weaving, collage, and light, emphasizing connections between southern France and the birthplace of silk. The work foregrounds textile history and material exchange rather than cultural contrast, using silk and handcraft gestures to honor centuries-old trade routes. The practice centers on lirette, a medieval technique of repurposing fabric strips into dense, hyper-colored surfaces that hover between tapestry, architecture, and object, rooted in a former silkworm mill.

Read at designboom | architecture & design magazine