Issues

Collecting history: Ancient antiquities dealer Galerie Chenel offers the world’s oldest collectables

“It’s about the coup de coeur,” says Ollivier Chenel, describing what attracts him to an object. That arresting, ineffable moment when something calls to you is what Chenel has made his business over the past three decades but, really, it has been a life’s work. During Chenel’s early years, his father was an antiquities dealer in Nice. But where Chenel Snr specialised in art deco furniture, his son found himself intrigued by much older objects. “Like most kids, I wanted to do something a bit different,” he says. Alongside his wife, Gladys, he moved to Paris in 1999 to open their first antiques gallery. They were joined by his brother Adrien six years later. “We were generalists at the time because it was about making our mark and meeting our first clients,” says Chenel. Over time, the trio started to specialise in ancient antiquities.

Gladys oversees the curation of Galerie Chenel’s softly lit space that overlooks the Louvre. Among the pieces that she has currently chosen for display is a marble funerary inscription from the end of the first century, made for a former slave who became a calligraphy instructor. It was discovered by archaeologists in the south of France in the 19th century and is now priced at €480,000, given its rarity. “It’s a unique object not only because of the story that it tells but also the remarkable quality and precision of the calligraphy work,” says Chenel.

The detective work needed to trace the origin and journey of these antiques is what Chenel most enjoys about his job. He becomes animated when describing the background of another item, a fragmented statue of Venus, which will be shown at this year’s Tefaf fair in Maastricht. The marble sculpture was made in the first century and has bounced back and forth across the Atlantic in the private homes and museums of several collectors. The sculpture’s missing limbs (it now consists of just a torso, hips and thighs) only make it more special in Chenel’s eyes and well worth its €650,000 price tag. “Rodin once said that fragmented pieces are more interesting than full sculptures and I wholly agree,” he says.

The gallery often sources from private collections and auctions across Europe and the family has developed a shared taste that defines Galerie Chenel. “We have never argued over a piece, as first and foremost we buy something because we love it,” says Chenel. “Every year, our collection has something new but with our identity at the heart of it. That’s what our clients are coming for – the object but also the experience.”
galeriechenel.com

Endyma Berlin: The secret fashion archive renting museum-quality designer pieces

Whether they’re a student or a creative director, anyone who arrives at fashion archive and dealership Endyma is first asked to wash their hands. Visitors are then instructed not to pull on any of the garments on the racks but gently lift them by their hangers – and ideally avoid touching them at all. “Even if it’s just a bunch of T-shirts, I treat it as a life-or-death situation,” says founder Michael Kardamakis.

These aren’t any old T-shirts, of course. Kardamakis, a Greek-born 33-year-old, has spent 15 years assembling a goldmine of 1980s and 1990s fashion, including the world’s largest collection of Helmut Lang garments. The clothes take up a whole Altbau apartment in Berlin’s Schöneberg district. The front of house is reserved for the Austrian avant-garde designer, while the back holds designers such as Burberry, Armani and Jurgi Persoons.

Endyma (Greek for “garment”) operates as a shop and reference library for the fashion industry, with pieces rented out for shoots or used as inspiration for collections. Designers study the garments to copy the collar construction of a leather coat or to figure out how Lang adapted a military strap for a silk organza dress. “It activates the imagination,” says Kardamakis of Helmut Lang’s design. “It’s just the right amount of wrong.” On the racks, hangers with blue cubes mark items that aren’t for sale. “Others might be available, depending on my mood,” says Kardamakis. Prices start at €150 but rise to four digits for rarer pieces. A Helmut Lang biker jacket from 1999 will set you back about €2,000. Kardamakis’s customers are those in the know. “They’re people who already have 20 biker jackets,” he says.

Every Endyma item is treated with museum-level reverence and all acquisitions get a painstaking touch-up. This can mean taking garments apart by the seams to wash the pieces separately. For shopping appointments, staff will prepare a rack of clothes to try on and then de-lint all of the linings afterwards.

Despite having no formal training in fashion – he studied art history at university – Kardamakis has a couturier’s knowledge of tailoring. During tours, which are given for a modest fee, he waxes poetic about the differences between officers’ greatcoats and sailors’ peacoats, or variations in screen printing on denim. The brands that he collects are those that experimented with the construction of clothes, before much of luxury fashion was swallowed up by marketing budgets and logo-mania. “Brands put on a crazy show but what they make money on is €45 perfumes,” he says. “These were just cool clothes for cool people to wear.” Endyma weaves them back into runways, magazine spreads and your wardrobe too.
endyma.com

On the hunt for a vintage Braun collectable? Only/Once Shop is the place to start

In 1958, Czechoslovakia triumphed at the World Expo in Brussels. Its pavilion, with its sleek modernist design and showcase of innovative new gadgets, won the Gold Star, the fair’s highest accolade. Though it took place decades before he was born, the event provided an unexpected seed of inspiration years later for collectable-design dealer Filip Triner. He left his native city of Munich in 2011 to study graphic design in Prague and experience life in the Czech Republic, the country that his parents had left during the Cold War. When he began to research the 1958 World Expo, he was captivated by the winning pavilion’s sense of style. “Half a century later, I saw so many objects from that period that are now described as Brussels style,” he says. “For people like my grandma, they were communist relics. But for me, they were masterpieces.”

Triner began a personal collection, initially scouring Czech flea markets for lamps, clocks or small electronics. But after moving back to Germany, he discovered something that inspired him even more: objects created by Dieter Rams for Braun when he was the head of design there from 1961 to 1995. “I love their timeless simplicity,” says Triner. He began adding these products to his vastly growing collection.

In 2011, Triner launched an online publication about graphic and web design. Then, with his storage overflowing, he decided to begin selling his product collection to his readers, rather than just writing about them. Thus was born his online shop, Only/Once, in 2013. Through collecting, Triner had learned about product restoration. “I began to love taking an item in bad condition, making it look almost brand new and then passing it on to someone else,” he says. “That process is more satisfying than owning the object.”

Now, Triner sells between seven and 10 products a month. Each is a labour of love. He sources them online or through European dealers and collectors, then two local veteran electricians overhaul them. Finally, Triner or his father deep-clean and polish the pieces to museum quality. Braun products make up most of the business but Triner also sells other 20th-century designs, from brands such as Italy’s Brionvega and German manufacturer Krups. “Krups doesn’t have collectable status but it has beautiful products,” says Triner. “I love its egg timers. When they ring, it’s such a beautiful sound.”

There are currently 100 objects listed on Only/Once and Triner has a further 250 items waiting to be refurbished. For the occasional viewing, he has an appointment-only showroom in the basement of his house in Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm, a town outside Munich. “I do get attached to my pieces,” he says. “But it still feels good to let them go and be loved by someone else.”
onlyonceshop.com

‘Don’t buy the watch – buy the seller’: Massimo Bernardini on carving out a niche in the vintage timepiece market

Massimo Bernardini, better known as Max, has lived more lives than most. Within 10 minutes of entering the Milan dealership that bears his name, which focuses on vintage watches and a few select home décor pieces, Monocle has discovered that the globetrotting polyglot speaks English with an American accent and Spanish with an Argentinean one – and can also converse in Serbo-Croat, thanks to his years at an international school in Belgrade.

After travelling the world with his banker father, Franco, Bernardini moved to Naples at the age of 14. He had been introduced to the world of vintage jewellery by Franco – “a compulsive collector” who, in 1982, left the corporate sector to set up the business that we stand in today. Thanks to his multilingualism, Bernardini landed a job as a translator for Naples-based Argentine football superstar Diego Maradona at the age of 16. “I spent the money that I made by translating on watches,” says Bernardini, leaning back on a chair in his office, a hand-rolled cigarette in his hand. “My first client was Diego,” he adds. “I sold him three Rolex Day-Dates.”

Bernardini took over the family business in 2018. It’s an elegant space: there are cigar holders and vintage glasses, as well as lots of watches in cabinets (the serious ones are locked away in a safe or at the bank). In one corner, resident butler Brandon stands behind a small bar, ready to prepare an espresso or, later in the day, an el presidente (martini with white rum). Max specialises in pre-1990s complicated Patek Philippe and complicated Rolex watches made before 1963, while his staff cover other brands and periods. If you’re a regular collector, you’ll be ushered into his office to examine an intricate watch dial under a microscope.

“Might I introduce you to his royal highness the 1518,” says Bernardini, pulling out a 1940s Patek Philippe. “Very few were sold with a gold bracelet,” he adds, handing the timepiece to Monocle and gently asking us to hold it over his leather-topped desk, so that, if it were to fall, it won’t hit the floor (it later emerges that the watch is worth about €1m). Bernardini says that of the 281 1518s made between 1941 and 1952, he has sold 97 of them.

Though Bernardini now faces competition from the internet, he has built up his client list over three decades, with much of his business coming from the Middle East, Asia and the US. The company includes 10 staff in Milan and a showroom in Hong Kong. He says that he gets “a huge kick” out of rare timepieces and the attention to detail with which they are made. “This watch,” he says, pointing to the €600,000 “Tasti Tondi” Patek Philippe on his own wrist, “doesn’t scream at you. But it’s rare, it’s beautiful and there’s no CNC [computer numerical control]. There was a genius of craftmanship that has been wiped off the face of this planet.”
bernardinimilano.com

Grab a seat at Trovo, Madrid’s chair specialist sitting pretty

For many madrileños, Sundays kick off with a bit of antiquing and tapeo around the city’s largest and oldest open-air market, El Rastro. Its stalls, where objects old and new have been sold as far back as the 18th century, have given rise to a clutch of antique shops that remain open beyond the market’s hours of operation.

Lola Feijóo, an antiquarian originally from Galicia, opened her shop dedicated exclusively to chairs in 2023. Though only a short walk from the mercado, Trovo offers a fresh perspective. “It’s true that when I started – and even as recently as last week – colleagues from El Rastro will come by and ask me in shock, ‘Only chairs?’” she says, laughing.

After earning an art history degree, Feijóo spent more than 20 years working across the antiques and restoration industries with a specialisation in appraisal and valuation. When she decided to open a space of her own, her instincts led her to make an initial acquisition for an undetermined future business. That purchase was of a set of wood-and-rattan Dutch bobbin chairs from the 1920s, a style known for knobbly, lathe-turned legs and arms. The procurement of this piece set the course for Feijóo’s venture. “The chair is an object that has been designed in so many ways,” she says. “I was drawn to the fact that I could explore the dimensions of chairs and the materials that they’re made from, as well as pieces made by specific architects and designers, though there are many wonderful examples by anonymous designers too.”

Focusing on seating was also a practical matter: Feijóo is able to lift and handle the objects herself and collect them without the need for a large storage space. In her cosy shop, visitors can find chairs that stack, others that fold and some that are upholstered; there are those that are part of sets alongside the solitary and the sculptural.

Nestled along Trovo’s smooth white walls are cult classics: for example, a pair of Gaudi armchairs by Vico Magistretti in off-white fibre-reinforced polyester (€650) or a reissued Argyle chair by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in black lacquered ash (€1,200). Feijóo is particularly excited about a recent find – four Peota chairs from the 1970s by Gigi Sabadin, who used plywood to create gorgeous curves. Feijóo sources her chairs globally and makes regular visits to France and Italy.

Feijóo’s favourites are those by Italian designers from the 1950s and 1960s but she is not a slave to specific styles or periods, instead relying on her instincts. She is also a proponent of mixing chairs as part of developing a personal sense of interior-design style. “I am of the mindset that if a chair’s design is beautiful, it is imbued with its own inherent personality,” she says. “So it will always pair well with other chairs.”
trovo4.es

The London art director collecting Earth’s rarest sculptures: Meteorites

“Everyone’s fascinated by the idea of holding a piece of the solar system,” says Jethro Sverdloff, co-director of London’s Art Ancient. Sverdloff deals in “exceptional works” – unusual objects that include Corinthian helmets and Iron Age brooches. His business, however, is increasingly devoted to meteorite fragments. In the world of collecting, they are often called the “ultimate rarity”.

Sverdloff shows Monocle a small black meteorite that landed in Costa Rica in 2019. It formed part of a meteorite shower that was captured on CCTV and dashcams. The piece is on sale, together with the kennel that broke its fall, for £500,000 (€577,000). “Until recently, meteorites weren’t considered a collector’s item,” says Sverdloff, who selects the rocks for his gallery based on their beauty. “Meteorites bear the scars from their atmospheric entry to Earth, which alters their shape and colour.” The mesmerising sparkle of Fukang meteorite fragments, discovered in China’s Xinjiang province, makes them the trophy piece of any collection. “These translucent, gem-quality crystals were shooting stars and they still look like them,” says Sverdloff.

As well as their aesthetic quality, the scientific significance of meteorites makes them precious artefacts. Sverdloff describes them as “messengers from the formation of the early solar system, 4.65 billion years ago”. Meteorites are sculpted by events such as cosmic collisions or extreme heat, creating thumb-like depressions or glassy coatings. These signifiers fascinate Sverdloff. “I have always been drawn to beautiful, storytelling objects, created by the most improbable of events,” he says. “Even after years of handling them, that sense of wonder never really goes away.”

Some meteorites are far rarer than sapphires or diamonds and the sales figures support this. In 2025 a 24.5kg meteorite sold at Sotheby’s for $5.3m (€4.6m), becoming a bellwether for a category that, 10 years previously, was barely present at art auctions. Art Ancient was the first specialist to attend Frieze Masters in 2019 when the gallery presented a timeline of 54 objects – from meteorites to elephant-bird eggs – that charted the history of our planet.

“Major art fairs have shown that meteorites have a cross-category appeal,” says Sverdloff. Art Ancient’s clients include technology and finance entrepreneurs as well as interior designers looking for statement pieces. “What these clients share is curiosity and a desire for pieces that are genuinely rare, visually beautiful and come with great stories.”

How to show off your otherworldly artefact? “Meteorites should be displayed like any other rare, precious object,” says Sverdloff. “When you put them in a vitrine with explanatory labels, they read as specimens. Instead, we give them space and lighting, so they read as sculptures.”
artancient.com

Missing old-school audio? Press play at Dug Factory, Tokyo’s boombox specialist and analogue empire

Ask anyone in Japan about acquiring a vintage boombox and one name will crop up repeatedly: Junichi Matsuzaki. The Tokyo-based 65-year-old has amassed a collection of 5,000 portable radio-cassette players and vintage electronics. At his shop in Shibuya, the shelves are lined with mono and stereo examples from the 1970s to the 1990s by Japanese companies such as National, Sony, Pioneer and Sharp. There are blank cassettes, Japanese music of yesteryear on tape and merchandise designed by an artist friend, including T-shirts declaring “Boomboxes are beautiful”. Matsuzaki sits at a small desk, repairing a Sony radio with a tiny built-in TV screen to make it fit for contemporary use.

“The number of pieces that I sell every year is limited,” he says. “Each item requires careful maintenance and restoration before it can even be offered for sale.” Parting with favourites can be hard but Matsuzaki is pragmatic. “When I buy a boombox, I look for great design,” he says. “I keep some for my personal collection and sell the others. However, if someone wants something specific from my collection, I’m open to letting it go.”

Matsuzaki used to work as a display designer, adding panache to interior spaces with old Japanese appliances. “That spilled over into my personal life,” he says. “I spent weekends browsing recycling shops, gradually assembling a collection of pieces that caught my eye. What began as a hobby evolved into a professional pursuit.” Design moved into the background as boombox dealing took over.

Matsuzaki acquires most of the pieces in the collection directly from owners who no longer use them. He also works with waste-disposal companies, which set aside radios and cassette players as they arrive. If he’s lucky, he might pay a few hundred yen but he can pay up to ¥100,000 (€550), depending on the model and condition. Selling prices are similarly varied. A Sony CF1700 might be retailed at ¥11,000 (€60), while the hefty Sharp GF-909 can sell for ¥220,000 (€1,200).

Matsuzaki says that cassette culture is enjoying a revival in Japan, prompted by an increasing number of artists releasing new music on tape, as well as the rise of cassette specialty shops in Tokyo. His customers vary in age and nationality but the core buyer is likely to be someone in their fifties or sixties who grew up with radio-cassette players. The outsized JVC M90 – an early-1980s hip-hop classic beloved of Run DMC – is highly sought after. And mint condition is key. Matsuzaki’s collection includes used items but also unused deadstock pieces. Original packaging and accompanying manuals are significant too. “Complete sets from the era are prized, as they offer a full glimpse of the appliance as it was originally conceived,” says Matsuzaki.

After 23 years it’s hard to believe that Matsuzaki has gaps in his boombox collection but he hankers after one in particular: the National RX-5350, a large stereo radio-cassette player released in 1983. “While many models of the era leaned towards rugged, bulky designs, this one stands out with its sleek, futuristic design,” he says. “One day I hope to acquire one in excellent condition.”
dug-factory.com

Small tags, big statements: The art and design of iconic clothing labels

A clothing label is small and inconspicuous by design, often tucked away in folds of fabric. So it might seem an unlikely place for a brand to sketch out its style philosophy. For canny designers, however, this little tag has long been just the place to set the tone, whether by adding a clever illustration, inscribing a reference to a company’s heritage or breaking the black-and-white mould with a burst of colour. Here, Monocle’s editors and stylists present a few of their favourite examples.

For each of its seasonal collections, Munich’s A Kind of Guise takes inspiration from a different country. This label, being an ode to Belgium, features the nation’s staple foodstuff: frites. In focusing on one location at a time, the brand advertises its singular sense of fun.

Régric’s labels for Arpenteur are designed like mini-comic strips. The French cartoonist has been working with the menswear firm since 2011, establishing a distinctive visual identity thanks to his ligne claire drawings. If his style looks familiar, that’s because it was popularised by Belgian cartoonist Hergé, the author of The Adventures Of Tintin.

Fiorucci’s playful cherubs are integral to the Milanese brand’s image. Originally illustrated by renowned Italian graphic designer Italo Lupi in the 1980s, they were inspired by a Victorian-era Christmas card depicting two angels – a nod to the company’s provocative blend of heritage and irreverence. 

According to the Venice-based Barena’s design team, the bright orange of its label was inspired by the city’s anti-fog signals and warning markers, and was picked for its “visually arresting quality”. 

While 95 per cent of Swedes can identify Fjällräven’s fox logo, it wasn’t the company’s trademark when it was founded in 1960. But as Swedish speakers will know, fjällräven translates as “arctic fox”. 

The bold font of Kaptain Sunshine, and the minimal lettering, highlights its clean aesthetic and distaste for loud logos. With this Tokyo brand, everything is black and white.

CYC, one of Singapore’s oldest bespoke tailoring firms, has a place in the country’s history, having dressed Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister. This archive collection from the 1970s recalls the optimism of the era and is paired with bright cotton and linen shirts, perfect for the year-round balmy climate. 

To mark its collaboration with fellow British firm Wales Bonner, John Smedley has designed a co-branded label. According to managing director Jess Mcguire-Dudley, this is a significant event. “[Our founder] John Smedley was a great marketeer at heart,” she says. “One of the only 19th-century manufacturing business owners to brand his products as a marker of the pieces’ superior quality, he chose to stamp both his name emblem on the inside of each garment using dark blue ink.” It is still a feature of the firm’s clothes to this day.  

Casey Casey’s bold lettering is purposefully direct. Since its inception in 2008, the Paris brand’s graphics, invitations and labels have, like its garments, been handmade and hand-finished. 

De Bonne Facture’s collaboration with Spanish knitwear atelier Knitbrary features a drawing of a stack of books. The elegant French company, whose name means “well made”, works with high-quality European ateliers, and Knitbrary is no exception. 

Sunspel’s sun and clouds motif was in circulation in the 1940s and 1950s. Now, with provenance a valued quality, the firm is once again flying the flag for brand UK.

En Soie’s playful textile label recalls the Zürich-based brand’s history as a silk trader. The colourful fringing adds texture, while the whimsical alpaca motif is a nod to the atelier’s commitment to using natural fibres.

Meet Rena Dumas and RDAI, the design minds creating beautiful Hermès boutiques worldwide

Anyone who has ever stepped into a Hermès boutique – and there are more than 300 worldwide – has experienced the Parisian brand’s meticulously designed interiors, housed in architectural marvels. But few will know about Rena Dumas, the woman who dedicated much of her life to translating the essence of the maison into bricks and mortar. “Rena was very humane and intuitive,” says Julia Capp, the CEO of Rena Dumas Architecture Intérieurs, today known as RDAI. “It was extremely important to her how you felt within a space, how you sensed it both personally and culturally.”

Dumas, who died in 2009, grew up in Athens before studying interior design in Paris. There, in 1959, she met her husband, Jean-Louis Dumas, the CEO of Hermès from 1978 to 2006. She founded RDAI in 1972 and designed interiors, studios and offices for Christie’s, Yves Saint Laurent and John Lobb. But the boutiques for Hermès were where she could really impart her vision – and capture the essence of a brand. She started in the mid-1970s by delving into the French luxury brand’s archives for the redesign of the flagship on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

Her collaborations in the following decades included working from 1998 to 2001 with Pritzker prize-winner Renzo Piano on a luminous 15-storey skyscraper in Tokyo’s Ginza district, housing Hermès’s Japanese headquarters; there’s also the flagship in Seoul, which includes a museum, café and offices, completed in 2006. Dumas believed that every Hermès boutique should be unique while staying recognisable.

Today, under the leadership of Dumas’s close collaborators, architects Denis Montel and Julia Capp, RDAI has a team of 120 people. The pair joined the practice in the late 1990s during a period of growth and worked closely with Dumas before taking over to continue her legacy. Montel is executive vice-president and artistic director, though the company is still tied to the Dumas family. “When Rena met someone, she would immediately sense what they could be,” says Capp, an Australian who worked in London, Hong Kong and Shanghai before joining the practice in Paris. “She didn’t look at either of our portfolios. She’d seen what we were working on and asked whether we wanted to work for her.”

The firm has since expanded beyond interiors into architecture. In 2014, RDAI won France’s top architecture award, the Équerre d’Argent, for the Cité des métiers Hermès workshop in northeastern Paris, featuring a façade combining hand-moulded and glazed bricks. Other projects under Montel and Capp’s direction include residential towers in Taiwan and the interiors of the five-star Hotel SO/Paris in 2022. But it’s the detailed, high-end interior design for Hermès that the practice is best known for and where experimentation and creativity – particularly with materials – take centre stage and define its distinctive approach.

RDAI’s studio is housed in a grand Haussmannian building in the heart of Paris, a short walk from Place des Victoires. Montel and Capp welcome Monocle through a courtyard that was once home to the piano-maker Érard – Franz Liszt was a regular visitor – and into their office, with its lofty corniced ceilings and a grand marble staircase. The first floor is home to an open-plan workspace; a corridor lined with rolls of fabric, timber samples and lengths of rope; and the studio’s Materials Library, a room where floor-to-ceiling shelving is densely packed with samples in every conceivable finish and texture. Here, a small team is dedicated to the office’s deep research into new, custom materials and techniques that will inform future interiors, particularly for clients such as Hermès.

Over the years, the Materials Library has amassed a list of some 7,000 international suppliers and tens of thousands of samples. “There’s something almost a little exaggerated about the way that we work,” says Montel, explaining that craftspeople are tracked down all over the world to work with the collection of materials. “Increasingly, we don’t search for new materials. We produce them after seeking out the necessary skills.”

It’s an approach that translates to the firm’s work for Hermès. The design for every new boutique begins with rigorous research into its geography, social customs, gastronomy and, above all, local crafts traditions. Collaboration with regional artisans informs interiors in which nearly every element is custom-made, from tapestries to tiles and carpets. In the Mumbai shop, for instance, some walls are clad in bamboo-veneer marquetry in a deep blue recalling the painted houses of Jodhpur, while others are enveloped in hand-embroidered fabrics produced by a workshop of 80 women across 10 villages.

In Lille, contemporary rugs incorporate motifs referencing Dutch paintings in the city’s picture gallery, while at the recently relocated shop in Hanoi, tables reinterpret the traditional Vietnamese technique. “Every boutique is an ambassador for local craftsmanship,” says Capp. “Hermès is a luxury goods brand but it is also a brand of craftsmanship. So, we’re communicating what the brand does.”

Every Hermès boutique is distinguished by a striking façade – the threshold that first engages the passer-by and often where local crafts are reimagined and pushed in new directions. For the shop in Fukuoka, the façade draws on kumiko, a traditional Japanese woodworking technique in which intricately carved pieces are joined without glue or nails. RDAI had the pieces precision-cut by machines and then assembled by hand. Similarly, in Lyon, which is often described as the “city of silk”, both the shop’s wall fabrics and the woodwork feature embossed details that are reminiscent of brocatelle fabric. These creations are sometimes the result of relationships that go back several years or even decades before a project finally comes to light. “It’s constant exploration,” says Carole Petitjean, the director of RDAI’s Materials Library and design department. “It’s a research process that is carried out everywhere in the world all of the time, regardless of whether there’s a specific project.”

Despite maintaining a consistent design approach to their work, no two of RDAI’s Hermès shops are identical but all are immediately recognisable as belonging to the brand. That coherence comes not from repetition but from a disciplined approach to texture and proportion and, above all, an obsession with colour cultivated by Rena Dumas. “Before meeting her, I didn’t know one could be so precise with colour,” says Montel, adding that new names had to be invented – “smoked aubergine”, “fresh butter” or “water mint” – to capture the nuances that standard palettes could not express.

Dumas’s own furniture designs extend this philosophy. Conceived largely in her spare time – what she called her “secret garden” – the approximately 60 pieces that she created reflect the same attention to materiality and modularity that’s seen in her interior design. They include a hand-knotted carpet in raw silk with a central yellow sun motif, a chestnut folding screen and console, and a small modular table in figured ashwood that can be divided into two smaller consoles. Though the practice has long reissued these designs, only recently has this dimension of the studio’s activity been more formally developed. A new department, RDAI Éditions, is set to launch later this year.

Only a few ago, investing this degree of detail and resources in physical retail might have seemed questionable, even for luxury brands. But Montel is confident that RDAI’s approach has a bright future. “The way that a brand can really communicate about itself is not online,” he says. “Boutiques are increasingly important. And even beyond shops, architecture can play an important role.”

Portfolio
RDAI has designed Hermès shops across the globe. Here are three of our recent favourites.

1.
Hermès Vienna
2023
Housed in an 18th-century building, RDAI’s concept draws aesthetic inspiration from the Viennese secession. It features bespoke glass globes, art nouveau-style stucco mouldings and a gently winding staircase.

2.
Hermès Omotesando
2021
This shop features a geometric copper-coloured stainless-steel cladding that wraps around its exterior. Inside, curving walls and bamboo marquetry bring a sense of play to the retail experience.

3.
Hermès Lyon
2021
Referencing Lyon’s nickname, the city of silk, the shop’s wall fabrics and woodwork have embossed details reminiscent of brocatelle fabric. The original building was renovated and extended to include adjacent premises.

The commute: Step aboard Takaoka’s city tram with Mayor Yuzuru Demachi

In the latest stop for our regular feature The Commute, we head to coastal Japanese city Takaoka, 500km west of Tokyo, to meet its mayor Yuzuru Demachi. A former foreign correspondent, he was elected to city hall in 2025 and uses his crosstown tram ride to make a broader point about his politics and meeting the electorate.

What time will we find you on the platform?
At about 08.00, though sometimes I cut through Takaoka Castle Park and walk to the office instead.

Will you be listening to music or a podcast?
Neither really. I’d rather talk to people on the tram or, if I’m walking through the park, enjoy the sounds of nature.

What do you like to chat about? Is it small talk about the weather or straight to politics?
One resident might tell me that there’s a pothole near their house that I need to sort out or a student might say that she’s planning to vote for me. On the way home, I buy a can of beer at the convenience store and chat to the staff there – that’s part of my daily routine.

You have said that taking the tram is a statement…
The easiest changes are those that you can make yourself. I cancelled the lease on the official car and stopped travelling in [more expensive] green-car seats on the bullet train. And I cut my own salary. I want to build a city that works with public transport, where people can walk around. It’s a burden on society when parents drive their kids to school every day. And honestly, I also want more than just going back and forth between home and city hall in an official car.

Are there other ways to get around?
Buses. Right now, they’re in a vicious cycle: fewer passengers, less revenue, fewer services, then even fewer passengers. We need to break that. We’re looking at things such as routes that run jointly across operators and pilot schemes for autonomous vehicles.

That’s enough about work – where do people relax in Takaoka?
The Amaharashi Coast is where everyone is heading. The views of the Tateyama Mountain Range rising beyond the sea are something else. When friends visit Takaoka from Tokyo [about two hours by train], I take them to Shino, a counter-only obanzai restaurant, or to the restaurant inside Nousaku, a traditional casting foundry.

Well, this is our stop. What’s next for Takaoka under your leadership?
The city is already rich in history, craft and culture. So the challenge now is in adapting to a new era and creating a place that feels joyful and full of possibility. How can we make that happen? I just try to listen to as many people as possible. That’s why I take the tram.

Further commuting:
Take the Paris metro with shoe designer Alexia Aubert
Join José Miguel de Abreu biking from Porto to the central Ribiera district