VILLA DE NOAILLES — HYÈRES — SUMMER 2005

On the occasion of The Festival International de Mode et de Photographie at Hyères 2005, Pierre Hardy has developed the reading room and dining rooms of the Villa Noailles by using prime examples from his fourteen shoe collections to expound in three different ways upon the same theme.
In the hidden entrance the characteristic symmetry of the ‘shoe-as-object’ flirts with abstraction.
In the passageway the Rorschach stain drawing calls to mind the fetish status of shoes and the obsessive reaction they induce. The reading room opens out on to the garden, exposing a circus of high-heeled A-listers multiplied infinitely by a hypnotic system of mirrors.Last but not least, the final salon cultivates an air of mystery. One must come very close to the black monolith to discover its contents, from every angle and in every details.

(Available in Hyères 2005 Catalogue) Photos © Fuji Shoji