At Hermès petit h, creation begins where another process might normally end.
Rather than starting with a fixed design, the workshop works with materials left unused by the House’s other métiers — leather, silk, crystal, porcelain and more — allowing artisans, artists and designers to respond to what is already there. In Dubai, that philosophy now takes over an entire floor of the Hermès store at The Dubai Mall, where petit h returns from 5 to 20 October with a new installation built around reuse, reinvention and a certain sense of play.
At the centre of the installation is a variable-geometry carpet designed by Godefroy de Virieu, Creative Director of petit h.
Woven from palm leaves and supported by metal structures, it rises, falls, twists and folds through the space, creating a continuous path that sits somewhere between object, landscape and architecture. The use of palm leaf brings a local material into conversation with a craft tradition stretching back millennia, while the metal framework pushes the structure firmly into the present.
The result is less a conventional retail display than an environment designed to be wandered through.
Along the way, visitors encounter a series of objects that reveal petit h’s taste for improbable combinations.
A horse-shaped bookshelf appears dressed in an iconic Rocabar blanket. Silk carrés are transformed into a pillow, eye mask and slippers. A trestle stool is made from a terrazzo of Roman tiles, while cork and crystal become a mirror. Elsewhere, a terracotta jar is finished with leather and braided silk patchwork — a particularly clear expression of petit h’s instinct for giving existing materials an entirely different role.
None of it feels especially interested in hiding where the materials came from. That is part of the appeal. Silk still looks like silk, leather remains recognisably leather, but the context changes completely.
Founded in 2010, petit h describes its process as creation in reverse.
Materials come first. The idea follows.
It is an approach that leaves room for improvisation, with discarded or unused elements combined, adjusted and assembled until they become something new. Sustainability sits naturally within that process, but so does humour: the resulting objects are often functional, occasionally strange and deliberately difficult to categorise.
In Dubai, that spirit expands beyond individual objects and into the space itself. The palm-leaf carpet guides visitors through a collection built around second lives, unexpected encounters and the pleasure of seeing familiar materials behave differently.
Hermès petit h is open to the public at The Dubai Mall, Fashion Avenue, Level 2, from 5 to 20 October 2026, daily from 10am to 10pm.
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