What I hope the traveling kiosk of Le Monde d’Hermès accomplished while it did its run in Manila, at the courtyard of the Ayala Triangle Gardens, from April 26 to 28, was an activation of the lust for park life in a country so blessed with nature, yet so averse to it or at least not appreciative enough of it.
The traveling kiosk, a worldwide campaign for the magazine Le Monde d’Hermès that the 186-year-old French luxury brand publishes twice a year to immerse readers, through stories and pictures, in “the collections and conversations that illustrate the diversity of the world of Hermès,” debuted in Prague in fall 2021.
Modeled after a typical Parisian newsstand, it has since its debut done its rounds across the planet—Barcelona, Hanoi, London, Lisbon, Kuwait, Strasbourg, Istanbul, Singapore, Rotterdam, Tokyo, Knokke (in Belgium), and Manila! True to Hermès tradition, creative license is generously given to the artists and artisans to tweak details of the kiosk here and there to reflect the locations that host it. Thus, at Ayala Triangle Gardens, solihiya was incorporated into the design of the kiosk. Very Hermès, but with a distinctly Filipino touch.
The brand activation seemed ill-timed, the end of April, when the average day temperature in Celsius soared to highs of 40s and 50s. The Friday opening was scheduled in the mid-afternoon and the courtyard at Ayala Triangle Gardens on Paseo de Roxas Street corner Makati Avenue corner Ayala Avenue in Makati City, was transformed into une petite place à Paris, with orange tables and chairs surrounding the kiosk where, to beat the heat, ice-cold drinks, including water, popsicles, and personalized fans were given away, along with pastries, personalized bookmarks, a pot of flowering plants promised to thrive in happy sunshine, and—at least I got one—a portrait of any guest who would like one done live by an artist on the ground in chi chi, nonchalant, very French strokes!
Of course, the object of the popup activation, the spring-summer 2024 issue of Le Monde d’Hermès, was up for grabs for anyone curious enough to check out the kiosk. Page after page of this season’s issue, 600,000 of which have been printed for worldwide distribution, is a take— creative, whimsical, thought-provoking, and enriching—into “The Spirt of the Faubourg,” in ode to 24 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, where lies the Hermès flagship store in Paris. Eight minutes from Hotel Le Bristol and a skip, a jump, and a hop away from the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, the boutique built in 1889, at 1,700 square meters in its current incarnation, is the largest Hermès store in the world, opened officially in 1880 as a workshop and then turned into a boutique nine years later.
“This edition of Le Monde d’Hermès,” said Hermès artistic director Pierre-Alexis Dumas, “embarks on a madcap attempt at an inventory, a reductio ad absurdum of the inexhaustible nature of the Faubourg, an inhabited place, and ‘enchantary,’ as my father poetically called it, a machine for travelling in time and space, a mini department store, a museum, a table d’hôtes, a garden, a studio—in short a labyrinth, a labyrinth intractable to logic because it is a dream creation—dreamed by Émile Hermès—and the crucible of all Hermès dreams, while presenting the new collections by Hermès 16 métiers.”
Le Monde d’Hermès has been designed, according to the Hermès team, “to celebrate and share a collection of unpredicted secrets and memories, creating a spirit of inspiration across time and space with interesting storytelling.”
Days prior to the opening of the three-day activation, what I had in mind was: “Can Hermés lure us to a lazy, leisurely, breezy, but scorching afternoon in the park in Manila?” My first question was, “What park?” There is no park in Manila, at least not in summer, when afternoons are at their laziest, most languid, most langorous.
But, bracing against this El Niño, climate change-crazy heat, I did take a walk in the park for Le Monde d’Hermés and I’m glad I did.
Except for its choice of location, it reminds m e o f Bratislavaborn architect Petra Marko’s book Meanwhile City, which exp l o r e s a n d recommends temporary interventions, like popups, pools, parklets, and play areas to activate, even populate previously ignored parts of cities.
But park it! Its choice of location in Manila is perfect—a park, which we only like to look at through the glass windows of airconditioned buildings. The traveling kiosk of Le Monde d’Hermés is the best of very few times I ever had fun at a park in Manila, not counting those faded childhood memories of picnics at Luneta Park. “If you build it,” said the voice in Kevin Costner’s character Ray Kinsella in the 1989 movie Field of Dreams, “they will come.”
And so we did, and we came in droves, not just for the popsicles, fans, bookmarks, potted plants, and copies of Le Monde d’Hermés, 30 pages of “an attempt at an inventory of the Faubourg, fully in-house: its objects, its people, and all the things that make up its spirit,” but also for a lovely day in the park. And we could even have danced the Hermés Pony Dance (for fitspiration).
What I hoped this brand activation—unique and fun and enriching—activated was our lust for parks, even in this tropical weather. I mean, look at Singapore, the Garden City of Singapore. A barren desert compared to our diverse wealth of flora and fauna and natural resources, this equatorial c o u n t r y , hot as hell, now boasts of over 300 parks and four nature reserves, a testament to its high green quotient.