PHOTO COURTESY OF HERMÈS
Hermès has a long habit of turning its obsessions, whether it be horses, ropes, chains or gardens, into porcelain. This season, the French maison heads underwater. Natures Marines, the new tableware collection launching in boutiques on 1 August 2026, takes its entire visual language from the quiet, drifting world of algae and coral.
PHOTO COURTESY OF HERMÈS
British illustrator Katie Scott drew the collection in its entirety, working under the direction of Charlotte Macaux Perelman and Alexis Fabry, who oversee the Hermès home universe. Scott built the motifs from two reference points. The first lies in the precise, hand-drawn style of 19th-century English botanical plates. The second draws on real specimens of marine flora gathered along the Welsh coast.
The result is a series of distinct forms, from splayed sea fans and branching corals to ribboned kelp and feathery algae. Each boasts the same specimen-like accuracy a naturalist might have used two centuries ago. Rather than settling on a single signature colour, the Natures Marines collection spans a spectrum of roughly 30 hues. They include cool sea greens, sandy mineral beiges and warmer notes of coral orange and deep red.
Hand-painted gold detailing runs through select motifs, catching light the way it might filter down through shallow water. Altogether, the tableware collection comprises 34 pieces, covering nearly every category a table setting could call for. That means not just dinner, dessert and bread-and-butter plates in multiple motifs. Alongside come soup plates and deep platters, as well as small and large salad bowls.
There's also a six-cup teapot, matching creamer and sugar bowl, while mugs, teacups and breakfast cups round out the drinkware. Finally, a vase, trays and a cake and tart platter complete the set. This is one Natures Marines collection that asks diners to set their table with what Hermès is calling, rather fittingly, a garden beneath the sea.
