Hermes Scarf Au Coeur de la Vie (At the Heart of Life) MINT! Grail! In Original Box and Tissue

Oozing pure quality, it is hardly surprising that this extraordinary scarf, with so many colours, such details and originality, is considered a collectors’ Grail. A true collectors’ item. In mint condition, and still in its original (verly lightly marked) box and perfect tissue!

Au Coeur de la Vie was designed by Aline Honoré for Hermès Spring/Summer 2007 collection, reissued in 2014.

The design shows a jungle teaming with plants, flowers and wildlife, almost luminous in their vivid colouring.  The detailing, as expected from Honoré’s work, is incredible with beautiful shading. It is a scarf to lift the mood on a gloomy day, and a scarf to celebrate a sunny one. The reissue in Spring/Summer 2014 collection was of the design which had previously appeared as both a 90cm silk twill and also as a silk mousseline.

The intricate details of this scarf are incredible. Aren’t the plants and animals amazing?!

Hermes’ design story in 2007:

“Suspended between heaven and earth, nestling in the tallest trees of the Equatorial forest, the flora and fauna in this scarf weave in and out like the pieces of a gigantic puzzle. Together, they form a veritable canopy, a burgeoning of vegetation, swarming with extraordinary, little-known plant and animal life. The Au Coeur de la Vie scarf teems with a thousand unfamiliar details of the forest: unusual species of creeping vines, orchids, carnivorous plants, parrots, hummingbirds, small lemurs, insects, chameleons, butterflies … it reflects the infinite diversity, the incredible richness of equatorial life, the energy and imagination of nature. Difficult to reach and still largely unexplored, this milieu is the repository of a thousand vegetal treasures, green gold-mines and hidden secrets, a myriad of unknown living substances, plant cells bursting with the promise of life. It is up to us to protect this biological reservoir in order to understand its mysteries and to learn its lessons of beauty and health.”

Updated in 2014:
“Life is an extraordinary series of metamorphoses. Like an allegory of life itself, this carre takes us on an incredible journey, beginning at the heart of a single living cell, and ending among the branches at the tops of the very tallest trees in the equatorial rain forests.From the infinitely tiny to the infinitely great…

The forest canopy is an expanse of greenery reaching into the empty sky – all that lies between it and the sun.

Remote and inaccessible, it is beyond the reach of man: this is the realm of the imagination of Nature herself. The incredible, rich tapestry of fauna and flora is protected by its great height. The fabulous, living treasure-house holds innumerable undiscovered secrets. The heaving swell of dense, luxuriant vegetation is the setting for innumerable encounters and adventures.

Chameleons, monkeys, parrots, humming birds and tiny lemurs busy themselves amid orchid flowers and flesh-eating plants, leaping or flying from vine to vine. Energy is the heart of life.”