With petit h, Hermes Drive Towards Sustainability Also Speaks Volumes Of Its Creativity

Hermès’ drive towards sustainability also speaks volumes of its creativity. Johnny Khoo heads to Paris to meet Creative Director Godefroy De Virieu, who says petit his not about numbers, nor about the market – but about dreams

- Johnny Khoo

The petit h atelier in Pantin, located on the outskirts of Paris, is a place of dreams. Here, the Hermès offshoot creates charming objects out of surplus or discarded materials, through a combination of creativity and skilled craftsmanship.

Leftover leathers from making the world-famous Birkin or Kelly, unused fabrics from seasonal ready-to-wear collections for men and women, dormant silks from scarves, redundant trims of all kinds spanning buttons to metal hardware… These are wonderfully transformed into innovative, useful objects, breathing new life into the high-end scraps.

While many companies tend to throw away unused or defective materials and goods, a rising awareness of sustainability and social responsibility has led other forward-thinking enterprises to look into ways to reduce material waste.

The result for Hermès is petit h, which was born in 2010 to upcycle precious scraps in ingenious ways. At the same time, it also brilliantly demonstrates the company’s expertise in craftsmanship and its uncompromising stand on quality.

Led by Godefroy de Virieu, Creative Director of petit h, I embark on an eye-opening tour of the atelier to explore its world of dreams. Like a labyrinth brimming with treasures, the studio is filled with swathes of surplus leathers, boxes of excess trimmings, flawed crystal glassware and porcelain, piles of rejected silks and other fabrics that failed to meet Hermès’ demanding standards of perfection.