How Christophe Goineau transforms threads of silk into works of art for Hermès
The only difference is where you hang these artworks
By THE DAY we meet at the Hermès offices in Sydney, Christophe Goineau is dressed in a soft blue shirt and denim, an H08 – the 2023 braided glass-fibre composite case with green details and matching strap – at his wrist. Around his neck, a silk scarf is knotted. A final flourish that elevates the outfit into something personal and but also an appropriate finishing touch for the man who is the Creative Director of men’s silk and men’s universe designs.
When Goineau joined Hermès in 1987, aged 21, men invested in their ties as a rotating essential, almost one for every shirt. “People were coming in, they would say, ‘Okay, I need ties,'” he recalls. “It was functional. Then slowly, everything changed. We became more casual.”
By casual, Goineau means that ties were no longer a prerequisite but an optional addition to daily clothing. But optional meant that they were bought with more consideration.
“People started to become more selective. They started thinking, ‘Okay, I’m not wearing these that much, but now I want to wear something that’s more me’.”
Almost four decades later, the obligation has faded – outside law and finance, few workplaces still require a knot. Goineau, whose own drawer holds roughly 150 ties (a modest amount, he insists) admits that 10 years ago he felt pessimistic about the tie’s prospects.
He isn’t anymore.
“We are coming from a period where ties were a kind of uniform and now it’s the opposite,” he tells Esquire. “It’s now something expressing personal style, or feeling – something that is close to their heart, not like they are part of a club.”
The proof sits in the collection. “Back then, the options were printed ties or woven and that was it,” says Goineau. “But now we have really opened the world of possibility. We have a knitted one, we have leather, we have different blends of material, we have a different shape … the options are more open because men now want to select something specific to them.”
And if people are buying ties more selectively, they’re doing so with more consideration and care in their purchase. Some designs may now sell only around 300 pieces worldwide, it’s an outcome Goineau prefers due to the higher level of intention behind it. “I am happy because I know that the people who bought this tie will also be the only people in the world to get this tie.”
Another detail that excites him is the manner of wearing. The younger buyers coming into Hermès to buy a tie wear them however they please, unbothered by the codes his father handed down. “I remember rules like my father told me, ‘Okay, don’t put dots ties with the stripes, or don’t wear square with squares,'” he says. “Now they don’t really care about rules. They wear it with their polo shirt, or they wear it with a short sleeve shirt.”
One area in which Goineau has observed formality returning – particularly in Europe – is weddings, where the decision to dress formally is seeing an uptick in popularity. “In Europe especially, young guys, they might get married and go back to something very formal, which is quite fun for young guys … It’s more fun now than 10 years ago, for sure.”
Then there is the tie’s other life, as an object passed between people. For years, roughly half of all Hermès ties were bought by women for the men in their lives, a statistic that puzzled Goineau until he saw the logic: “When you are wearing your tie, you don’t really see it,” he explains.
“We don’t see it the way others do,” he explains. “The person in front of you – your friend, your wife, your boyfriend – they’re the one who has the pattern and the colour in front of them.” Buying a man a tie is partly a gift, partly a gentle redirection – “They are buying that also to help the men to slightly change” – and the gift is an insight into their consideration of you and your style. You could argue that a tie, as a gift, speaks volumes about how much your significant other is attuned to your sense of style.
“We are a house of gifts in a way, because if you want to express your love to someone, you don’t want to buy something cheap, you want to buy something that would express how deep your love is. So you want to buy something nice.”
If the tie is where men rediscover silk, it’s the iconic Hermès scarf where the house makes its argument as the master of silk. And that each one is a work of art in its own way.
A men’s carré (square scarf) for example, follows the same arc as commissioning a painting. There’s the initial discussion, the conception and development phase before the work even begins. And then, it’s a collaborative process until the end. The long dialogue – with artists such as illustrator Elias Kafouros and Japanese designer Daiske Nomura – continues until the work belongs to both parties equally. “
“For me, when a design is well done is when you can still really see that it is done by an artist … and at the same time is still a beautiful Hermès scarf,” he says. “You have what I call the wedding between the house and the artist, and it has to be 50/50. One should not be over the other one.”
A finished design can also wait years before it’s released.
“When it’s finished, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be in the next collection. We put it in what we call the fridge,” he says, until a collection – each shaped by an annual theme, this year’s Venture Beyond – finds a place for it. Only then do the engravers begin, breaking the design into films, one per colour – 600 hours on average; printing can demand up to 48 screens, every edge rolled and stitched by hand in the Lyon workshops. Around two years may pass between the first meeting and its arrival in the store.
None of it is treated as inexhaustible. “An artisan is someone that cares a lot about the material,” says Goineau, a lesson carried over from the Maison’s leather ateliers. “When we use silk, of course, it’s a finite, precious material because we want the highest quality, so we have to be careful. Cashmere as well.”
But a scarf’s primary difference from more traditional concepts may define art is fundamentally its final address: you may not hang it on a wall – although you could – but you do hang it around the neck. And you get to make this artwork your own in a way something on the wall can never be. Fold it, even, into shapes for a breast pocket, or twist it once at the throat, a unique piece every time you wear it.
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