Lucia Hierro Captures the Spirit of New York with Hermès

Last October in New York, Hermès’s Madison Avenue location featured a petit h pop-up workshop and store windows that paid tribute to the energy of the city. The luxury house tapped the New York–based artist Lucia Hierro, born and raised in the city, to dream up the installation that showcased the imaginative interplay of materials petit h is known for.

706 Madison Avenue was transformed from the outside in, with window displays featuring park benches and oversized coffee cart cups, leading visitors into a wonderland of New York icons. The floors were made to look paved with the hexagonal concrete tiles in Central Park. Classic New York signs for tailors, dry cleaners, bodegas, and other city block staples hung near apartment building iron fire escapes and settees posing as oversized apples. Hierro’s practice of using uncanny materials and scale—the bigger the better—was a joyous complement to the ethos of petit h, a collection of objects centered on making use of materials Hermès otherwise wouldn’t. Founded in 2010, petit h features hybrid home objects that delight in their ingenuity and invention, while raising standards of function and sustainability. Under the artistic direction of Godefroy de Virieu, Hermès’s incredible know-how is transformed into surprising home goods that charm and brighten any space. 

Hierro spoke with Whitewall last fall about what it was like to collaborate with the luxury, but at its heart, family brand, and how it broadened the context of her practice.

WHITEWALL: How did this collaboration with Hermès begin?

LUCIA HIERRO: The conversation began with a studio visit with Peter. I studied fine arts, but in terms of design and functional design, I’ve always admired the brand. From seeing other collaborations with my artist friends, I had a feeling that I was really going to be able to have fun with this. 

I was going through a lot of personal stuff at the time, and I must say, they were so lovely about everything that was going on at the time. My mom was diagnosed with stage four cancer, and we already knew what was coming. All of these things were happening, and what I love was that Peter reassured me, “This is a family brand.” I spoke to my mother and she had told me, “You have to do it.” So I said yes. 

I went to see the new opening of an Hermès store in Chicago and the live workshops. I fell in love with all of it. I was amazed by so much of it. That trip was lovely—we visited artists, visited Hermès’s philanthropic works in Chicago. 

And then I went to meet Godefroy in Paris. 

“I studied fine arts, but in terms of design and functional design, I’ve always admired the brand,”

Lucia Hierro

WW: What was that like? 

LH: When I got there, I was like a kid in a candy store. I was so happy. When one thinks of Hermès, it can feel sort of serious, very polished. They take their artisans very seriously. What I loved moving through the space was how it felt like as much as everyone was working seriously, they were also playing. And every time we walked by, someone would be playing with something new. It’s really imaginative, and it feels like the more out there you are, the better. Once I saw that, I was like, okay. 

Walking through the workshop, that’s when the gears started turning. And seeing the color. This isn’t a boring brand. They have so much color. Every single scarf and collection is like a million colors. I asked, “What’s the palette?” They said, “Everything. Anything that you want it to be.” I wanted it to be connected to my practice, but for it to be something new, because it is a collaboration.

“What I loved moving through the space was how it felt like as much as everyone was working seriously, they were also playing,”

Lucia Hierro

Creating an Immersive Whimsical Environment

WW: So what kind of environment did you want to create then for these imaginative objects of petit h in New York, to reflect that sense of play?

LH: I knew I would not be creating an object, but creating the environment where these objects will live. So I started thinking, “I can take my ideas of the city and the ways in which I abstract and work in my own way, and I can start to shift it towards this.”

My references are all over the place. They’ll be like the city, but they’ll also be like the city as imagined on something like Sesame Street. It’s real with all these things added to give it more of that whimsical feel—a small bike sign turns into a larger blown-up thing. 

WW: I see that relationship in your work with Hermès, that element of playfulness in the surprise of material and scale in your work. 

LH: We know the Birkin design as we know it today. And I had never seen the really, really large ones. So it felt very uncanny.  I thought, “It has to be big. It has to be monumental.” The two major things that artists need is a good budget and time. And we had that. That was always the prompt. “Can you make that larger? Can we have that bigger?” and you’re like, “I sure can.” 

The Artist’s Classical Training Flourishes in a Bronx-Based Studio

WW: What draws you to that play of scale and material in your practice?

LH: I was lucky to have a lot of classical training. I was trained as a painter. I had to take bronze casting, printmaking, so there’s knowledge of all of those skills. I know what goes into it, and I know what it takes. This material that I’m using now is a printable fabric that can go through digital printer, same as paper. It came out of a need to step out of painting and to step out of tradition. I moved into fabric mostly to step away from that, but also still be in conversation with it. Canvas is still a fabric. And so the soft sculpture element of the work comes from looking at folks like Oldenburg, who I was really fascinated with. 

When my mom first came to this country, she worked in the garment district with her mom and her brothers, and they were there sewing all the other dresses that would go to big department stores. There was a lot of quality control there—if a stitch was off, that’s it, that dress isn’t going. And so she brought that energy to my studio when I told her I was doing these collage assemblage things in printable fabric and that I was going to need a hand. And she wouldn’t let me start that work until I sat down and learned to use the sewing machine and learned to sew by hand.

WW: Where is your studio? Can you tell us about it? 

LH: I’m in the South Bronx, off of Cypress Avenue. I’ve been in this space now for about 10 years. I’ve seen that neighborhood change a lot. And I’ve seen a lot of artists move in over the years, a lot of really amazing artists.

WW: What did that freedom of time and budget you mentioned allow you to do here with Hermès?

LH: Going into this project, there was a line drawn that Hermès respected, which was that my New York is not necessarily Hermès’s. I wanted to really protect that, and they really understood what that meant, which was lovely. There are these little signifiers and things where you might connect with where I’m from. Architecture-wise, there are details like painted brick—that is not something you find often near Madison or Park Ave. 

I love the architecture in New York. It’s so wild, and it’s changed so much over time. And I wanted to include some of that, because in my previous works, the architecture is implied. It’s color blocks within an institution providing a context for my work within that space as well. So I wanted to bring the context in with the work. I thought, “Now I actually have a chance to bring texture and to bring those architectural elements in. That’s fun and I’ve never done that with my work.”

“I love the architecture in New York. It’s so wild, and it’s changed so much over time,”

Lucia Hierro

But I was also thinking about space and more intersections. We all have to go to the dry cleaner. There are these moments of intersection that force us together. And that’s what we’re bringing in. That has always been there in New York, no matter what time you come in, whether you’re born and raised there or you come later in life. Like those are still always so New York, those moments.