Wow

Wow asks to be turned over. In its September 2020 letter to shareholders, Hermès described Ugo Bienvenu’s comic-strip scarf as an example of double-sided silk printing: one face in multiple colors and French, the other in monochrome and English. Turning the cloth changes more than the palette. It changes the language in which the scene speaks, making the reverse an alternative reading rather than a quiet back to the picture.^[1][+][+][+]

The movement begins before the scarf. According to Hermès, Bienvenu drew on animated shorts he had made for the house. Their heroine crosses Paris by sports car, on horseback, on rollerblades and by jet-ski, attracting the attention of two golfers along the way. The absurd succession of vehicles is part of the joke. A silk square becomes an unlikely stage for speed: a place where a still image can suggest the momentum of a film.^[2]

The double-sided treatment gives that sense of motion a physical counterpart. A flick of the wrist changes the scene’s visual register. Color, language and the handling of silk become parts of one small performance. The 2020 letter dates the evidence, not the first retail issue.^[1]

A marbled realization belongs to the same design family but must be read separately. The official Taiwan listing identifies Wow Marble Silk with reference H004067S 01, specifies hand-rolled silk twill and manufacture in Japan and gives dimensions of 88.5 by 88.5 centimeters. This is not the separately documented double-face reference. Its material description and place of manufacture should not travel backwards onto every Wow scarf, any more than the two-language treatment should be assumed for the marble version.^[3][2]

That distinction preserves the pleasure of the design as well as the accuracy of its history. Wow can be followed as an animated idea, a printed comic and a family of textile realizations. Its continuing subject is motion; its invitation is to pause, turn the cloth and discover another way of seeing.