Hermès is selling limited edition (140) scarves by Hiroshi Sugimoto for more than $8000 each:
Mr. Sugimoto, whose work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Artin New York and Tate Gallery in London, said that he agreed to the project after Hermès heir and artistic director Pierre-Alexis Dumas visited him in Tokyo a few years ago. Mr. Sugimoto showed him a floor-to-ceiling-height crystal prism that he installed in his studio after 10 years of meticulous planning and design. Engrossed by the way light shone through the facets and projected colors onto his white walls, “I proposed to him to transpose the colors onto Hermès silk scarves,” Mr. Sugimoto said.
Color has long fascinated Mr. Sugimoto. In 2009 and 2010, working on the “Couleurs” project, he recalled waking up at 5:30 a.m. to capture Tokyo’s morning light with an old Polaroid.
He and Mr. Dumas selected 20 images to turn into scarves. Hermès technicians spent months working with Mr. Sugimoto to interpret the “infinite gradation” that he envisioned on silk twill with a special inkjet printer.
Rethinking Color for Hermès (Scene Asia/Wall Street Journal)
