Memphis is not only famous for its music its also very proud of Hilton McConnico

Memphis is not only famous for its music its also very proud of Hilton McConnico

Hilton McConnico born Memphis Tennesse 1943

In the early 90's I was visiting all the trade shows around the globe relative to the 'home' and the emerging influences and colour palettes.

I have been a regular visitor to Paris on business and pleasure with my family and always stayed in a small but very well located hotel in Ave Latour Mauborg on the rive gauche between Les Invalides and the Eiffel Tour with the Grand Palais just over the river and the Bateaux Mouches ferrying us up and down the Seine.

I was visiting in the very early  90's either the first exhibition of Maison et Objet or its predecessor and was bowled over by the reception/entrance hall and installation - mind numbing in its originality. I made a point of enquiring as to who was the creative director behind this most 'joyous of introductions' but everybody was being very vague!

I pursued this whole subject when I got back to the UK and eventually eeked out 'the creator' - Hilton McConnico who it turned out lived in an appartment opposite to the hotel that I'd been staying over a number of years before. Hilton had been living in Paris since the mid 60's where he started working with Ted Lapidus and Yves St Laurent and then moved on to many other areas of creativity taking in set and installational design,, photography, decor, glass, rugs,furniture

Daum

 Cactus Furniture (I have a few pieces)

Pleyel Pianos and Furniture

Formia - Murano

 

 Toulemonde- Bouchart (Rugs)

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Hilton and I struck up a freindship that has endured albeit with considerable gaps until a couple of years ago when we met by chance at Maison et Objet where he was being introduced as the  designer of some fairly futuristic pianos.

Hilton was and is a close friend of the Dumas Hermes family and has carried out a creative role for the prestiguous HERMES brand  in general and when requested suggesting and helping with  advertising campaigns and brand and marketing support concepts and creativity generally. I think you will find that it was Hilton that came up with a Christmas campaign where they wrapped the Rue du Faubourg Saint - Honore store with a massive ribbon as if the store was a present tied up for Christmas, I think this concept has been copied many times since. 

Hilton has recently being commissioned again by the Dumas Hermes to create a special installation about Time.

"Hermes time does not try to master time but rather offers us the time to see and understand this ever changing world" says Hilton

My subliminal worry is that there will always be a chance that Bernard Arnault of LVMH  might still gain total control of Hermes and the question then will be would the centuries of culture and ethos that I suspect resonates through the walls of all the Hermes places of business and leisure be lost?.

Having said that I don't believe that Hermes and Hilton's undoubted genius can be suppressed.