EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE

In one of the most spectacular buildings in the world – the National Museum of Qatar in Doha, French Maison Hermès staged a most astonishing retrospective. Titled Once Upon A Bag, the exhibition was housed in a purpose-built structure that echoed the desert rose-inspired architecture of the museum, unveiled just hours after the grand opening of the latest Hermès store in Qatar – one of the largest single-floor Hermès stores in the world – situated in the Place Vendôme mall. On arrival, bright-eyed and expertly schooled guides escorted visitors through generations of bags, mostly selected from the Hermès archives by the Director of the House’s Conservatoire des Créations, Marie-Amélie Tharaud, but also sourced from the private collection of Émile Hermès. 

Presented with the assistance of Bruno Gaudichon, curator of La Piscine museum of art and industry in Roubaix, and scenographer Laurence Fontaine, the exhibition was a narrative journey, starting with the history of the equestrian-rooted Haut à courroies bag from the early 20th century, which marked the Maison’s first foray into leather goods, and followed by an expansive hall mapping the evolution of different bag families. Placed in lines of tall display cases like a perfectly turned out formation of le Garde républicaine, each line traced the history of a bag style – the clutch, the ladies’ bag, the men’s bag, the travel bag, and the sports bag. Some of the oldest bags at the front of each line even pre-date Hermès leather goods, part of the cabinet of curiosities collected by Émile Hermès, a travel bag known as the “overnight” bag circa 1840, for instance. In the ladies’ handbag line, a Kelly bag from 1935 actually predates its renaming for American actress and Monégasque princess, Grace Kelly; it’s called the Sac à dépêches.

A round black room reveals a series of innovative clasps that have features on the bags throughout the years, many taking inspiration from the Maison’s equestrian history. Following this room, another, with a rotating carousel of pieces called the “Bags of Mischief”, designed in the ‘80s by Jean-Louis Dumas, chairman of Hermès at the time. These bags feature leather marquetry depicting such scenes as sheep skipping over stiles, a yellow taxi, and parachuting people.

Finally, a room of the most creative bags designed exclusively for form rather than function, bags that have been especially created as concepts for fantastical store window displays or simply the most whimsical pieces sold – one covered in pink hen’s feathers is particularly striking, one with a shark’s mouth, or one in the shape of a horse’s head. Closing out the exhibition is an Haut à courroies “Endless Road” bag from 2018 that references a bag from the Mischief collection, and also eludes to the burgeoning future of the House, so steeped in heritage.