Courtesy of Hermes
Courtesy of Hermes
Hermès Beauty Creative Director Gregoris Pyrpylis unveils Rouge Brillant Silky, the house’s newest glossy lip signature. In an exclusive interview, he revisits the childhood memory that inspired it, breaks down the formula, and explains why this lipstick was designed to adapt intuitively to whoever wears it.
Hermès Beauty’s newest creation begins with a memory. When Gregoris Pyrpylis revisits the inspiration behind Rouge Brillant Silky, he returns to being a young boy in Greece.
“I remember when I was five or six and my mom would come to pick me up from school,” he says. “It was very in fashion: the silk chiffon, the muslin, very transparent silk, very airy and translucent. My mom had a collection of them in different colors: blue, pinks, corals. They were quite long, and she would wear them every day. When she came to pick me up from school, she would hold my hand, and because I was about level with her hips, the scarf would sometimes go in front of my face and caress my face. It became almost like a mask, and I would see the world through it, very colorful.”
“I’ve always felt that when you wear a silk scarf around your neck and you have nothing on your face, immediately a light arrives,” the creative director explains. “It has this power to illuminate and enhance the color of your face, so you don’t even need makeup. I wanted to do the opposite: if you’re not wearing a silk scarf, at least you can experience the sensoriality of a silk scarf through lipstick. And I hope people will have the same experience.”
He adds, “I will never forget this caress from the silk chiffon, this texture. I wanted to pay homage to this moment with a lipstick that borrows the elements that I personally appreciate in different types of silk.” From silk chiffon, he took the airy, weightless sheerness. From silk twill, he borrowed comfort and smoothness. And from silk lamé, he captured the high-shine, sparkling finish. “I gathered all these elements and wanted to pour them into this new lipstick,” he explains. “That’s why we called it Brillant Silky.”
Where previous Hermès textures drew from leather, Pyrpylis wanted an expression that “doesn’t cover, doesn’t conceal, but reveals.”
Rouge Brillant Silky arrives five years after Hermès launched its beauty métier in 2020 with Rouge Hermès, objects and accessories dedicated entirely to the beauty of the lips. In this new chapter, the house explores a delicately tinted and intensely glossy signature that merges color with emotion. The gesture is meant to be free, playful, and intuitive, with a finish that can be built from the faintest whisper of color to radiant, lacquer-like depth. “Colour merges with emotion and a personality reveals its full range of feeling,” the house notes. In total, the collection comprises fourteen permanent shades and three limited editions, each one conceived as a companion to its wearer. As Pyrpylis himself puts it, “Rouge Brillant Silky is a companion, a partner for every occasion. It offers the intimacy of an intuitive, free, and comforting gesture.”
This intentionality extends to the shade curation. Though Hermès developed around 50 prototypes, Pyrpylis narrowed the final selection to fourteen permanent shades and three limited editions, each chosen with deliberate clarity rather than excess. “People are overwhelmed today,” he says. “There’s so much information and so many products. I wanted to create a safe comfort zone where the client won’t feel overwhelmed.”
The transparency of the texture also guided the edit. “When a formula is sheer, creating too many pinks or beiges makes no sense; they can end up looking the same on the lips.” Instead, he focused on essential tones: deep burgundies, Rouge H, warm browns, sensual beiges, corals, and pinks. “Whichever shade you choose, even with your eyes closed, will look beautiful on you,” he tells us. “Even if you think you don’t like red, the red will look spectacular on you.”
For Pyrpylis, Rouge Brillant Silky is not about spectacle but sincerity. “I wanted to create something honest, something that releases the worries of the Hermès client and brings joy to them,” he says, a philosophy that threads through both the concept and the gesture of the lipstick.
The launch presentation in Singapore showcased this philosophy clearly. On stage, Pyrpylis applied the same shade, Rouge H, to three models, highlighting how texture transforms color into different stories. He demonstrated three finishes: First, the matte finish echoes the Doblis leather, a powder finish with a velvety surface. On the second model, the satin finish is reminiscent of Box calfskin, “always sleek, always luminous, always elegant.” And on the third model, Rouge Brillant Silky takes on the same spirit of the Hermès’ silk chiffon. “It’s soft and creamy on the lips. Like Hermès silk lamé, it has a very high shiny sparkly finish,” he demonstrates. “Once applied, it melts into the lips and it becomes natural, weightless. Like you’re wearing a silk scarf around your neck. ”
This buildability is one of Pyrpylis’ favorite aspects of the formula. “The application is very free, effortless, intuitive,” he says. “Depending on the way you apply, the intensity of the color can vary. You can start from something very natural to something very bold and sophisticated. It invites the wearer for precision or spontaneity. You can pair it with lip liners in order to bring more definition and concentrate the color.”
The formula itself is a central part of the story. Rouge Brillant Silky is a hybrid texture composed of 85% natural-origin ingredients, part of the house’s ongoing pursuit of balance between performance and naturality. “Transparency in formulas is so important today, you should know what is inside your beauty products. Performance is essential, but I also want to respect the person wearing it and bring in a self-care element,” Pyrpylis says. “We packed it with actives that care for the lips, so the more you apply, the more you care for your lips.” The formula incorporates raspberry leaf extract, sesame seed extract, Abyssinian oil, and white mulberry (Morus alba L.), all held within plant oils and butters that create the lipstick’s melting, comfortable glide.
Once applied, the color becomes weightless, almost imperceptible. “Once applied, it melts into the lips and it becomes natural, weightless, like you’re wearing a silk scarf around your neck,” Pyrpylis notes. This softness is echoed in the lipstick bullet, redesigned to encourage ease. Hermès introduces a new slender bullet with a slanted tip, made for controlled gestures but also free, intuitive use: dabbing, swiping, tapping. It may be worn without lip pencil, though a liner may be added for intensity and concentration of color.
The case itself continues the house’s lineage of beauty objects designed by Pierre Hardy, Creative Director of Hermès Beauty objects. Rouge Brillant Silky’s packaging is elongated and refined, crafted in lacquered, brushed, and polished metal with black, white, and permabrass finishes. It is refillable, topped with the engraved ex-libris “like an incurved fingerprint,” and housed in a protective Rouge H canvas pouch inside the signature orange box, a continuation of Hermès’ philosophy of beauty as an object to be cherished and kept.
Even its scent is considered. The lipstick carries an olfactory signature crafted by Christine Nagel, Creative Director of Hermès Perfumes, notes of arnica, sandalwood, and candied angelica flower that subtly accompany the gesture of application.
Pyrpylis believes lip color should always begin with intuition. “The way that you purchase a lipstick for me is pure intuition,” he says. “Try it on the lips… even when something seems too bold for you, it’s all about being familiar with color.” He suggests wearing a bold shade at home, while reading or doing the dishes, to ease into it. Over time, the wearer often realizes it suits them more than they expected.
Rouge Brillant Silky was designed precisely for this kind of relationship: personal, instinctive, and flexible. It’s a product that allows you the freedom to customize: “For a wash of color, apply lightly. For a tint, apply then dab with your fingertips. For a bold and sophisticated look, pair it with a lip liner,” he advises. “It’s the lipstick that adapts to you, not the other way around.”
