HERMÈS INVITES AMSTERDAM TO PUT PENCIL TO PAPER

This June, Hermès is stepping outside and asking Amsterdam to draw. From 4 to 7 June 2026, the house brings Hermès, Drawn to Craft to the city, a free open-air event dedicated to one of the simplest, most instinctive gestures in creation.

Forget stiff drawing classes or the pressure of getting it right. This is drawing as play, as movement, as a way of looking at the world with a little more curiosity. The event is designed as a joyful interlude, open to everyone, whether you are an artist, a child, a passerby, or someone who has not touched a pencil in years. At the centre of it all is the idea that drawing belongs to everyone.

Visitors will be welcomed by Hermès’ “pencil riders”, the house’s drawing ambassadors, before moving freely through a series of creative workshops. There will be a caravan workshop, drawing tables, easels, refreshments and plenty of space to let the hand wander. It’s all about enjoying the drawing gesture itself, so life-sized portraits, quick sketches, colouring pages and spontaneous lines all become part of the same world.

Drawing has always been a huge part of Hermès DNA. Since 1837, the brand has built its world through craft, material, imagination and savoir-faire, and drawing has always been there at the beginning of the process. The famous Chaîne d’ancre bracelet, for example, began as a sketch by Robert Dumas after he noticed a chain link while walking along the quayside in Normandy.

That is what makes Drawn to Craft feel like a truly genuine and fitting initiative. It opens up the private language of the studio and turns it into something shared and alive. The act of drawing becomes itself a form of storytelling: as Pierre-Alexis Dumas, Hérmes Artistic Director, puts it, lines are sentences, and drawing is the thread that carries them.

In Amsterdam, that thread becomes an invitation to slow down, make marks, and rediscover the strange little joy of putting pencil to paper.