HERMES - TRIPTYCH - PART I

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Conceived and Directed by David Michalek

Co-Conceived and Choreographed by Madeline Hollander

Set Design Jonathan Beck

DP Sam Wooten

Produced by Anchor Street Collective

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An internationally live-streamed dance inspired fashion show for the Hermes Autumn/Winter Women’s 2021 Collection. Billed as a captivating Three-act Triptych using Movement As A Medium, the live simulcast took place across three cities and time zones: New York, Paris and Shanghai.

Principal collaborators on the work were: choreographer Madeline Hollander; Etienne Guiol whose Paris-based studio, which specializes in video design for integration in live performance, facilitated the seamless transition of Triptych across three time zones; and set designer Jonathan Beck.

The work’s conception coalesced around the words of Hermes Artistic Director, Nadège Vanhée-Cybulski: “I want an artist directed film with a feel for the crossover of genres and disciplines. Not a film about fashion, nor about dance, but a film about us all and all the ways we can and must continue to reinvent ourselves.” She further suggested that plié and plissé (expressive folds in human movement and textile design respectively) might connect three conjoined but distinct creative articulations of the interaction between the collection and the women’s bodies wearing it. In addition, the famous Hermès orange (of the orange box) acted as an additional visual and contextual link between the three world-spanning chapters. Three creative teams in three cities (New York, Paris and Shanghai) were built to develop material within distinct parameters such that, in the end, they would meet as a seamless whole.

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Part I of Triptych kicked off with a live-streamed live dance performance that began at 8:30 a.m. in New York at the Park Avenue Armory with dancers from the New York City Ballet choreographed to move through a maze of rotating columns of fabric while being followed by three roving steadycam operators (the live-feed channels from which were being switched in real time). The live performance, which ran for approximately eight minutes, was then digitally “handed off” to Paris at 2:38 p.m. local time.

Part II was held at the Garde Républicaine in Paris and was overseen and directed by the designer herself in a “pure” fashion show format, which was live-streamed before being passed off to the team in Shanghai.

Part III concluded in Shanghai’s flagship Hermès maison, where the work returned once again to a dance-inspired, fashion/film format (with choreography of Gu Jiani) at approximately 9:50 p.m. local time.

All told, the resulting fashion show covered a distance of nearly 21,000 kilometers — and yet, was entirely digestible in under 30 minutes on any available screen, wherever the viewer happened to be.