Candidate catalogue entry
Please Hold The Line
Title: Candidate · not independently reviewedDimitri Rybaltchenko
Artist credit: Candidate · not independently reviewed
The inherited pilot metadata remains provisional. The separately reviewed note below does not promote the catalogue record or establish a first-edition year.
Brief creation story
The story, in brief
This note has its own sources and limits. The inherited catalogue metadata elsewhere on this page remains provisional.
Please Hold the Line turns the minor frustration of waiting on the telephone into a drawing. Hermès describes Dimitri Rybaltchenko’s design as an absent-minded, four-color sketch made while the caller waits for a connection. Lines and small motifs converge on the centre, where the house’s telephone number and Ex-Libris appear. The premise is wonderfully ordinary: a sheet of paper is nearby, the hand keeps moving and an interval becomes an image.[1]
The 2025 Hermès annual report names a Please Hold the Line carré 100 in its discussion of spontaneous drawing. A separately documented porcelain ashtray also carries the design, with a velvet goatskin base and a Hermès Paris stamp underneath. Its hand-applied decoration and platinum trim describe that object alone, not the material of the scarf.[2][1]
Seen through that story, the design celebrates attention that has wandered rather than disappeared. Waiting need not be productive to leave behind something worth keeping.
First-edition year: not established by these sources.
Sources and limits of this note
- Please Hold the Line ashtray · HermèsProduct description lines 36–50; The story behind lines 80–82; reference H314897M 01 · The story behind, lines 80–82 · Product description, lines 36–50
- 2025 Universal Registration Document · HermèsPrinted page 31, paragraph beginning A proclamation of the annual theme, the Please Hold the Line carré 100Additional independent QA confirmed the cited passage in existing primary-report text; the original access limitation remains recorded.
Evidence details and uncertainties
- artist · supported
- Dimitri RybaltchenkodesignPlease Hold the Line ashtray, Product description lines 36–50; The story behind lines 80–82; reference H314897M 01
- described narrative · supported
- Four-color telephone-waiting sketch; lines converge on telephone number and Ex-LibrisdesignPlease Hold the Line ashtray, The story behind, lines 80–82
- documented scarf · supported
- Carré 100 reported in 2025 annual reportreporting_year:20252025 Universal Registration Document, Printed page 31, paragraph beginning A proclamation of the annual theme, the Please Hold the Line carré 100
- documented object · supported
- H314897M 01: porcelain ashtray; goatskin base; Hermès Paris stamp; hand-applied print; hand-painted platinum trimproduct:H314897M 01Please Hold the Line ashtray, Product description, lines 36–50
- first edition year · unknown
- Unknownexisting_entity
What is documented
- Title
- Please Hold The Line Candidate · not independently reviewed
- Artist credit
- Dimitri Rybaltchenko Candidate · not independently reviewed
- First edition
- Unknown Unknown
Reviewed product variants
No product variant is established in the reviewed sample for this entry.
Discover the artist
Dimitri Rybaltchenko Candidate · not independently reviewed association
Documentary context
The title also appears in Rybaltchenko’s Ginza window display, dated from 29 May 2025 in a project caption accompanying his L’Officiel interview.
Window date only; no claim of scarf-first date, unchanged image across media, or current display status.
- Чарівні сни Димитрія Рибальченка · L’Officiel Online Ukraine
Олексій Нілов; date/byline lines 95–101; Please Hold The Line caption lines 159/179; artist discussion lines 192–194
This narrowly scoped reference does not establish an independent history of this design or its first edition. Historical evidence and visual credits remain separate.