Hermès Beauty’s eye and lip pencils invite playfulness with colour and texture

It’s been two years since Hermès Beauty welcomed Greek make-up artist Gregoris Pyrpylis as its creative director. Beauty is the house’s 16th and youngest métier, debuting two years before that in March 2020. (Although it has been creating perfumes since 1951, make-up and skincare were an entirely new category for the French Maison to explore).

‘Hermès Beauty is part of who we are: a house where everything comes from creation, driven by artisans who seek to accompany the men and women of today with elegance, and with the integrity and authenticity that we represent,’ CEO Axel Dumas said to mark its first launch, a range of 24 matte and satin lipsticks scented with a fragrance by Christine Nagel, that were everything one might expect from an Hermès beauty product, and more.

From the get-go, it was abundantly clear that the beauty line would be an expansive celebration of craft and colour; from the Pierre Hardy-designed refillable tubes to the bullets themselves, the lipsticks drew upon the 75,000 shades of silk and 900 tones of leather in the house archive. And each subsequent product category, from lip oils to nail polishes, has demonstrated this in a way that only Hermès could.

The latest in the ‘Trait d’Hermès’ eye collection, is perhaps the most playful offering yet: 40 eye and lip pencils (plus a liquid liner) that riff on the nostalgic feeling of receiving a new set of stationary at the start of a school year. Here, Pyrpylis shares the story of their design process with Wallpaper*.

Hermès Beauty’s ‘Trait d’Hermès’ eye and lip liners

Wallpaper*: How did the concept for the ‘Trait d’Hermès’ eye and lip liners start out?

Gregoris Pyrpylis: Last year (2023), we introduced the first collection for the eyes with ‘Le Regarde’. Within this chapter, you had ‘Les Ombres d’Hermès’, the eyeshadows, and ‘Les Traits d’Hermès’, a mascara. The new eye and lip liners are a second part of this, to complete the expression of the eyes. Their design is organic to the ethos of Hermès, referencing the tools we use to create.

W*: Yes, the collection is reminiscent of a new set of stationary – how did you communicate this in a way that felt right for Hermès?

GP: I vividly remember that I was one of those kids who loved stationary and having a huge palette of colours in front of me. It gave me this feeling of freedom. And this is what I wanted to communicate with the eye and lip liners. Hermès sees ‘design’ as a vehicle for telling stories. Just as the Hermès horse is a method of transportation, a design by Hermès can transport your mind.

I sat down with Pierre Hardy and told him my idea. He almost immediately began to draw out the designs on a piece of paper. The pencils are crafted from lacquered sustainable wood; he wanted to reference show jumping poles to tie everything together with the codes of the house. Then, the eyeliner pen is like a fountain pen, with a refillable cartridge. There’s a sharpener, too: it’s a beautiful object in itself and from a practical perspective it has four strong magnets inside so that when you travel, the pencil shavings don’t fall out

W*: Can you talk about the formulations of the liners and how to use them?

GP: I like make-up to be practical for everyone out there to use: for my friends, my mom, the Hermès client. So I wanted to create a pencil that combines the function of a kohl and a classic eyeliner. They have a texture that is very soft, but not greasy; it’s hard enough to define the eye, but soft enough so it will melt in contact with the skin. You can wear them in the waterline and the product delivers a pure colour.

There’s a small smudger on one end that will help to diffuse the colour, but if you want to keep the line precise, this is also possible. We enhanced our collection of brushes with a new design: ‘L’Estompeur de Précision’. It has a combination of natural and synthetic hair, so you can blend the liner, but in a very controlled way.

W*: How did you arrive at the final colour palette we see in the collection?

GP: We had to make an extensive edit. So we arrived at 24 eye pencils – which is the house’s lucky number – and 16 for the lips. For the lip liners, the exercise was a bit tough in the beginning. My goal was to have one for each of our lipsticks, that wouldn’t impact the colour of the lipstick. There are reds – blue reds and warmer yellow-toned reds. So we have, for example, ‘Rouge Bleu’, which is one of our most well-known lipsticks, and ‘Rouge H’. We also have rose and orange shades. But we also introduced beautiful beige colours as well, in a way that you can wear them on their own, without pairing them with lipstick, just to define and reconstruct the lip, if you wish.

W*: And what about the eyeliners?

GP: It was important to me that there were classic colours essential to everyone – a beautiful and strong black, different browns, metallic browns, bronzes – but also to bring Hermès’ singular approach to colour. So at the same time, we have the likes of ‘Jaune Impérial’, a kind of mustard yellow in the same shade as one of my favourite nail polishes, and ‘Bleuet’, a vibrant baby blue that is almost like the sky in Greece. ‘Brun Sanguine’ is a terracotta orange that is sublime when you put it on green or blue eyes.

To me, in 2024, make-up has become even more joyful, and more playful than ever. And this new chapter of ‘Trait d’Hermès’ is an invitation to explore this to its fullest.

hermes.com

A version of this article appears in the November 2024 issue of Wallpaper* , available in print on newsstands from 10 October, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today