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Designer, decorator, window dresser but also feminist, Leïla Menchari had a thousand and one talents. Artistic director at Hermès for more than fifty years, the Tunisian artist passed away this Saturday 4 April at the age of 93. Portrait.
Born in Tunis in 1927 and trained at the city’s Institut supérieur des Beaux-Arts, Leïla Menchari’s art has always smelled of her native Tunisia. As a child, she was already introduced to Mediterranean perfumes and scents in her family home in Hammamet, and discovered the joys of the flowered countryside and the blue sea. “The Garden taught me everything. Beauty, grace, but also work“, she will affirm later.
Nourished by sunshine and incense, she moved to Paris at the age of 21 and entered the capital’s École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, before getting in touch with Hermès decorator Annie Beaumel.
In 1961, she told her : “Draw me your dreams“. And some years later, after Annie Beaumel’s departure, Leïla Menchari became responsible for decorating the windows of 24 Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris. This was followed by a rich and fruitful collaboration with Hermès that lasted until 2013.
For fifty-two years, Leïla Menchari, a lover of beauty and exoticism, drew inspiration from her Tunisian culture to imagine, design and create four times a year the window decorations for the famous French Haute Couture house. Warm colours, precious materials, Tunisian weavings and embroideries, his flamboyant decorations will never cease to recall the lush gardens and oriental palaces of her youth, while blending with the luxury of the brand.
“I have built a bridge between the two shores of the Mediterranean, and the beauty of the shop windows comes, in part, from memories that are anchored deep within me.” she explained in an interview.
A fantastic universe that brings East and West together, and which borrows from the marvellous: “When you make a decor, there must always be mystery, because mystery is a springboard for dreams. Mystery encourages us to fill in what is not revealed by the imagination“, explained Leïla Menchari.
For the design and implementation of these enchanting decors, Leïla Menchari solicits painters, sculptors, leatherworkers, mosaicists, stonecutters and glassmakers whom she met during her travels and who help her to design a multitude of objects based on materials borrowed from nature such as pearls, shells or corals.
Fantastic, flamboyant, sumptuous, adjectives will then not lack to qualify Leïla Menchari’s windows, made in the manner of theatre sets but always in an authentic and sincere way: “Sometimes I have been surrealist, I love it, but always with real things, things that people could recognize. It had to be unexpected, unusual, surprising, and at the same time it had to speak to passers-by.” she said.
Born to a father who was a lawyer and a mother known for her lectures on the emancipation of women in the Muslim world, Leïla Menchari was also a modern and feminist woman, who told a story in each of her creations. A “Queen Magus” as the writer Michel Tournier liked to call her.
The woman who offers her dreams to Hermès went away last Saturday, April 4, most likely from Coronavirus.
The House of Hermès, which in 2017 was already devoting a major exhibition to her at the Grand Palais entitled “Hermès à tire-d’aile”, hastened to pay her a vibrant tribute: “She has never ceased to arouse the curiosity, astonishment and wonder, turning shop windows into teeming theatres, windows open to the outside world“, the house stated in a press release.
“A dreamer and an outstanding storyteller” who has spread the Tunisian craftsmanship and has given France a taste of orientalism.
Read also > Back to the career of Karl Lagerfeld, who died at 85 years old
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Designer, decorator, window dresser but also feminist, Leïla Menchari had a thousand and one talents. Artistic director at Hermès for more than fifty years, the Tunisian artist passed away this Saturday 4 April at the age of 93. Portrait.
Born in Tunis in 1927 and trained at the city’s Institut supérieur des Beaux-Arts, Leïla Menchari’s art has always smelled of her native Tunisia. As a child, she was already introduced to Mediterranean perfumes and scents in her family home in Hammamet, and discovered the joys of the flowered countryside and the blue sea. “The Garden taught me everything. Beauty, grace, but also work“, she will affirm later.
Nourished by sunshine and incense, she moved to Paris at the age of 21 and entered the capital’s École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, before getting in touch with Hermès decorator Annie Beaumel.
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Designer, decorator, window dresser but also feminist, Leïla Menchari had a thousand and one talents. Artistic director at Hermès for more than fifty years, the Tunisian artist passed away this Saturday 4 April at the age of 93. Portrait.
Born in Tunis in 1927 and trained at the city’s Institut supérieur des Beaux-Arts, Leïla Menchari’s art has always smelled of her native Tunisia. As a child, she was already introduced to Mediterranean perfumes and scents in her family home in Hammamet, and discovered the joys of the flowered countryside and the blue sea. “The Garden taught me everything. Beauty, grace, but also work“, she will affirm later.
Nourished by sunshine and incense, she moved to Paris at the age of 21 and entered the capital’s École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, before getting in touch with Hermès decorator Annie Beaumel.
This article is reserved for subscribers.
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