What Caught Our Eye
- HERMÈS centres the campaign on its legendary ring-adorned Collier de Chien, framing it as the star of a playful “spa day” narrative.
- The ten-second film is published under the hashtags RollModel and DogDailyRituals, leaning into the piece’s canine name with dry wit.
- HERMÈS was founded in Paris in 1837 by Thierry Hermès, originally making harnesses and saddles, a heritage that feeds directly into the Collier de Chien’s leather-and-ring construction.
- The house remains family-owned, with craftspeople producing pieces often by hand across categories including jewellery, leather goods, and accessories.
A Maison That Plays by Its Own Rules
Since Thierry Hermès opened his Paris workshop in 1837, the house has maintained an unusual relationship with levity. Precision craftsmanship and playful storytelling have always coexisted at HERMÈS, and the brand’s latest short film, running to a brisk ten seconds, makes that balance plain. The Collier de Chien, one of the maison’s most enduring leather pieces, is given a comedic framing as it heads off for a “spa day,” with the implication that even the most storied accessories deserve a moment to unwind.
The campaign leans hard into wordplay. The Collier de Chien translates directly from French as “dog collar,” and the hashtags RollModel and DogDailyRituals extend that canine logic into something genuinely charming rather than forced. It is the kind of campaign that only works when the product underneath the humour is genuinely solid, because the joke has to be earned. In this case, the ring-adorned leather piece is well-known enough that HERMÈS can afford to poke fun without undermining it.
For GCC audiences accustomed to seeing HERMÈS presented in its most formal register, whether in the boutiques of Dubai Mall or across the luxury corridors of Riyadh’s Kingdom Centre, this lighter register serves as a reminder that the house’s character has always included wit alongside weight.
The Collier de Chien: Leather, Rings, and Recognition
The Collier de Chien’s design is immediately identifiable: a band of supple leather punctuated by the metal rings that give it both its silhouette and its name. The construction traces back to the house’s equestrian roots, where studded and ringed leather was a practical feature of working harnesses and saddles. The leap from functional hardware to wearable jewellery is one HERMÈS made early, and the piece has retained its distinctiveness across decades of production.
What keeps the Collier de Chien relevant is partly its versatility across the HERMÈS catalogue, appearing as rings, bracelets, and chokers, and partly the craftsmanship that underpins each version. HERMÈS craftspeople, working often by hand, bring the same attention to the Collier de Chien as they do to the house’s more storied leather bags. The result is a piece that wears its provenance visibly, without needing to announce it in text.
For the GCC collector, the Collier de Chien represents the kind of investment accessory that sits alongside high jewellery from houses such as VAN CLEEF & ARPELS or CHANEL in terms of cultural cachet. It is a piece with a clear point of view, and the new campaign film reinforces that identity in an unexpectedly disarming way.
Campaign Wit as Brand Strategy
Short-form campaign films have become a standard tool for luxury houses, but very few manage to say something coherent in under fifteen seconds. The ten-second runtime of “Loosen up” is partly a constraint of the social media formats where it will circulate, but it also reflects a confidence in the Collier de Chien’s own recognisability. The piece does not need context or explanation, only a scenario, and the spa-day conceit provides exactly that without overstaying its welcome.
The use of dog-themed hashtags (RollModel, DogDailyRituals, HermesCollierDeChien) suggests a strategy aimed at social discovery rather than broadcast reach, placing the film within existing communities of interest rather than pushing it outward through paid media alone. For a house that has historically been measured with its digital presence, this represents a deliberately informal register that is nonetheless entirely on-brand. The wit is controlled, the craft is implied, and the product remains central throughout.
Why It Matters
For GCC collectors and luxury accessories enthusiasts, the Collier de Chien campaign is a reminder that HERMÈS’s most recognisable pieces are built to generate conversation far beyond the point of purchase. The film, available to watch via the official HERMÈS YouTube channel, distils the house’s founding leather heritage into a ten-second moment that is both genuinely funny and commercially precise.
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