Wild Horses: Hermès Stages an Astonishing Ride Into the Sunset

“Astonishment is a human quality: it’s the ability to wonder, to surprise ourselves, and to reinvent ourselves.” So said Pierre-Alexis Dumas, artistic director and family scion of Hermès, as he stood by an open fire late Tuesday night and addressed the crowd of 150 people, all shod (like Dumas) in black mid-calf rain boots. We were in the Rhone delta, deep within the Camargue Regional Nature Park, in the South of France. Lightning occasionally illuminated the otherwise star-speckled sky.

Dumas was addressing an audience composed mostly of Hermès staff members drawn from across the globe. Along for the TGV ride down from Paris was a cluster of journalists and friends of the house. We were here to observe a ritual which in its unorthodox eccentricity and undoubted romance is distinctly Hermès: the unveiling of its annual “theme.” This is a word-encapsulated concept through which the 186-ish year old company every year seeks to creatively redefine itself. In 2022 it was “lightness”—a sort of late-stage Covid gentleness—but for 2023, intoned Dumas by that flickering fire, Hermès will return with full intention to its raison d’etre in order to become: “astonishing.”

To transmit the essence of its themes into its global corporate diaspora, Hermès seeks every year to embody them, which is where the really fun part comes in. Before leaving Paris, we had been given no clue as to where we were going. Upon alighting at Avignon, then transferring south towards the Camargue, the location became apparent, but not the purpose. What would we be doing in our rain boots? Some speculated we might harvest rice from the paddies that lined the road we trundled down.

Suddenly, the first bus in line wheezed to a halt: a tree had apparently fallen to block the road. As we scrambled out onto the mosquito-thronged verge—with key Hermès Paris personnel remaining determinedly straight-faced—a few of us offered to haul it out of the way. Then two Manadiers— Camargue cowboys—clopped into view. We jumped into four tractor-pulled trailers and headed off-road, through a paddock of local bulls—Raço di Biòu‚and next a beautiful group of local Camargue horses, which the Manadiers rear to herd their bulls. Along the way we were offered bottles of “infusion” by a traditionally-dressed couple in a cart. We were not in Paris anymore.