There’s an innate tension within Hermès’s Chaîne d’ancre line, a jewellery collection that borrows the rough heft of industrial metal and translates it into something light and mobile — a weight made weightless. The design was first introduced into the maison’s line-up back in 1938 after Robert Dumas, Émile Hermès’s son-in-law, was struck by the stark simplicity of anchor chains on boats moored in a Normandy harbour and swiftly added the details to the Hermès moodboard. Almost a century later, what began as a simple chain with a rugged elegance evolved into one of Hermès’s most intriguing creations.
Under the direction of Pierre Hardy, the creative director of jewellery at Hermès, the Chaîne d’ancre has moved well past its workhorse roots. It deliberately taps into its contradictions and expands on them, celebrating them. An exhibit dedicated to the Chaîne’s oeuvre, unmoored from its home in Paris, is currently touring the world, and reveals the level of intricacy that this deceptively minimal collection contains.
During the exhibit’s stopover in Sydney, Hardy explains that the Chaîne d’ancre isn’t about chasing trends. “The chain is a chain, any chain,” he says. But this one “sums up in one object all the layers of what makes an object beautiful”. To Hardy, this collection, so rooted in practical design, embodies Hermès’s philosophy of functional elegance — the kind of minimalism that doesn’t strip anything away but instead builds on essentials. Hardy’s Chaîne d’ancre isn’t about altering its essence, it’s about exploring how far that essence can go. This creative approach is deeply embedded in Hermès’s practice, where history is always a platform for new design, not an anchor to keep things in the past.
In Hardy’s hands, the Chaîne d’ancre pieces are experiments in playing with rules, breaking them just enough to make each link, clasp and chain feel fresh, as if you’re seeing the anchor chain concept for the first time. This can mean something as bold as the Chaîne d’ancre Punk collection, which takes the smooth, rounded links of the original design and twists them into something spiky and unexpected. “My biggest pleasure is to try to twist the rule,” Hardy says. His Punk rings — in rose gold, set with black spinels or diamonds — contort the link into an elongated version of itself, an unorthodox flourish that makes the piece feel less like classic jewellery and more like a small piece of art, wearable but provocative.
The Chaîne d’ancre collection plays on contrasts at every level, constantly testing the line between weight and weightlessness, boldness and restraint. Take, for example, the Chaîne d’ancre Multichaînes necklace and bracelet in silver. In these pieces, rows of chain links are layered, isolated or interwoven to create a shifting, rhythmic surface that doesn’t just lie flat but has a shape and movement of its own. Hardy uses asymmetry and layering to disrupt the flow of the links, creating a structure that feels almost sculptural, allowing each link to interact with the next in subtle but intentional ways.
Then there’s the Chaîne d’ancre Calypso earrings in yellow gold, understated pieces with a single diamond. They could almost be considered minimalist, but Hardy’s eye for scale and proportion gives them a quiet complexity as they convey a sense of gravity for all their lightness. For him, weight is not just a matter of how jewellery feels on the skin but how it interacts with the body — how it asserts its presence without overpowering. “It’s a paradox,” Hardy says. “The weight of a piece is a way to appreciate and to feel its density. But it’s also very symbolic.” He captures this balance in a philosophical question: “Is the lightness an advantage because there is no gravity, or is the weight the essence of the object, a proof of its quality?”
The high jewellery pieces in the Chaîne d’ancre line take this tension between lightness and weight to another level. The Chaîne d’ancre necklace — a stunning creation made from rose gold, set with 5,191 diamonds (53.62 carats) around a single cushion-cut orange sapphire, or its white gold counterpart with 3,532 diamonds and a 2.02-carat oval-cut centre diamond — are built to dazzle without losing their grounded sense of structure. Hardy’s approach here isn’t about adding more sparkle for the sake of it, it’s about using diamonds and colour as design elements to create pieces that feel rich without ever tipping into excess.
The Sac bijou Chaîne d’ancre is perhaps Hardy’s most audacious take. This miniature “minaudière”, a compact wearable bag in white gold and set with 11,668 diamonds, sits at the intersection of high jewellery and functional design. It’s not a piece that fits neatly into a category — not quite a necklace or a bag — but it embodies Hermès’s willingness to experiment. “Jewellery should transform us,” Hardy says. “They allow us to explore different facets of ourselves.” Indeed, the Sac embodies that belief, blending traditional jewellery with the practicality of an accessory in a way that feels entirely modern.
Hardy’s creative process blends the past with the present in a fluid yet precise manner. “It’s like speaking or writing,” he says. “You learn an alphabet and then a grammar, then you learn how to compose. There is a lexicon, a language and a vocabulary.” For him, each piece in the Chaîne d’ancre line is a sentence in a long story, one that’s told in fragments, each link a separate word that builds on the one before. This approach means that the Chaîne d’ancre line is never static. Instead, it’s a design language in constant evolution.
What marks the collection as so distinct within the Hermès universe is that even in its most extreme interpretation, the Chaîne contains within it the purity of form that first caught the eye of Dumas eight decades ago. This is perhaps why Hardy sees Chaîne d’ancre as beyond time. “It’s such an essential object,” he says, pointing out that chains have appeared throughout history, from ancient Rome to the present day. “There is no timing for jewellery. Of course, there is fashion,” he says. “But when it comes to what is essential to a ring, chain, crown or tiara, there is an archetype. So you consider this and play with it.” Hardy’s goal is not to update the line with passing styles, but to distil it further to get to what he calls “the essentiality of the object”.
The Chaîne d’ancre collection is filled with pieces that each tell a small part of a larger story. Each piece adds a new layer to the chain motif, from the Crescendo earrings in white gold with 60 diamonds cascading down in an almost organic flow, to the Chaîne d’ancre Danaé necklace in yellow gold. These aren’t pieces that demand attention. Rather, they draw in the eye with their subtle complexity, each a reflection of Hardy’s belief that the beauty of an object lies in its essentials.
Ultimately, Hardy’s work with Chaîne d’ancre isn’t about making a statement, but about building on Hermès’s long-standing ethos. The collection feels like a conversation between past and present, between the weight of heritage and the lightness of creative freedom. As Hardy sees it, each piece should feel familiar yet reveal something new. In his hands, the Chaîne d’ancre becomes a design that moves through time without being bound by it, a line that speaks to Hermès’s values while quietly evolving with each new interpretation.
