Fashion Symbols with Aynura Maye

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The Untold Story of Hermès

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Sky-rocketing price and unaffordability aside who doesn’t love the sight of the Hermès Birkin bag and the stories revolving around it? Even my Google news feed sometimes pops up articles about the celebrities who were seen with it. The enigma of this House is not only about its products, but also its name. The general story is that the Fashion House took its name from the namesake Messenger God. Obviously Hermès was born as a brand specialized in travel accessories (back in times when travel accessories meant horse tack and supplies). So the name of The God who is believed to travel all the time seems to be the right fit. But what kind of messages he used to deliver?

Hermès as a symbol of full transcendence – coming from the depth of underground going upwards to paradise.
Photo: the Internet

The God Hermès that everybody knows

The typical description of the God Hermès goes like this: Hermès is a “psycho-pomp” – that is to say soul-guide. Its statue is a piece of stone – Herm that has Twined Snake around a staff on one side and an Erect Phallus on the other. Next to him there is a sort of tree in a very simple form. Let’s call this composition statue. This statue used to be placed in crossroads alluding to its capacity to travel between worlds. Because like a shaman, Hermès used to guide the dead to the underworld and bring messages from there (bizarre huh?)

Let’s leave behind the logical reasoning and dive into a dimension where concepts transcend the rational and limited meaning we ascribe to them. Then we’ll see what Hermès really represents for us.

Design detail – winged feet of Hermès. Photo: the Internet

If I have to sum up in simple words, Hermès symbolizes the transmutation of soul through the history of evolution.

Not Messenger Only God Hermès

This myth talks us about times when an early man started to rise from the darkness of instinctual life (symbolized as the underground world) towards his/her way to acquire rational thinking (terrestrial life). This young Hermès has a metamorphose nature. He is not a underground force only (meaning, the purely instinctual element of the unconscious). He is also connected to the conscious life. However with capacity to still descend into the dark layers. He symbolizes the process of transcendence. While having a foot in the underground he travels from one dimension to another. How? This part is really funny.

Herm – the initial and simple version of the God Hermès. Photo: Man and His Symbols, C.G.Jung

He penetrates thru darkness of the unconscious into the light of terrestrial life (a.k.a light of reasoning) with his Erect Phallus. I know you are laughing now. But it turns out this is how our mind works at very deep levels. That childish and archaic mode of thinking is still there. Erect phallus is overly sexual of course. But in that dimension, phallus translates into fertility and not physical fertility only, but creative power of the psyche, fecundating, life giving power as well. The twined serpents are in sexual union. Again, sexual not taken literally, but equal union of the opposites that is transcendental, wholesomeness.

Almost as a rule, terrestrial and water animals symbolize our instinctual drives, forces of the “underground”. Reptiles being intermediate creatures with a capacity to live in two different environments, allude to this transcendence – arising from the depth of dark uncontrolled mass towards the world of light – the conscious reasoning.

Hermès – the symbol of full transcendence

Hermès is a living symbol that has been subject to elaboration. In middle ages, it acquired wings which denotes to rising from terrestrial life towards spiritual transcendence.  Wings symbolize this transformation. Even the caduceus in his hand that is a symbol of healing got wings at the top of the serpents. Thus our little fellow acquired a power of full transcendence – coming from the depth of underground going upwards to the paradise.

Not by chance, in the chain of living things we are the only ones who come from darkness of instinctual world of animals with aspirations to mature into spirituality of paradise. We are the terrestrial beings just between underground compulsive forces and heavenly angles.

To close, the soul each of us carry is Hermès destined to evolve through these stages. So, every time, you see an Hermès item, remember, there is a small Hermès inside you too and is way more valuable than anything money can buy.

Fendi’s show on Fontana Trevi and hidden mysticism

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I have moved to Rome in the beginning of 2016. Pregnant. The baby was due in July. While I was trying to settle down and make space (literally) for the new member of the family, something incredible was happening in Rome of which I became aware quite late. More precisely, that thing was happening in the same month that I was giving light to the new addition of our family. Fendi put on a spectacular show called Legends and Fairy Tales on the iconic Fontana Trevi to celebrate the Fashion House’s 90 years of heritage.

Fendi celebrating 90 years with subtle mythic show – Heroes and Fairy Tales
7 July 2016, Rome, Fontana Trevi
Photo: Internet (Victor Boyko/Getty Images)

To tell the truth, I was too busy with family duties back then. In fact even the idea of this blog hadn’t been born yet. But the thought of me being in Rome during that event and not knowing about it somehow pains me. When I write it down I realize how mean I sound.

Cut to the chase, Fendi’s show was majestic, mythical and obviously very much appraised. Now, almost more than two years later I am going back to that event to share why I would have loved to know about it and why it made people “wow”.

Fendi celebrating 90 years with a subtle mythic show – Heroes and Fairy Tales
7 July 2016, Rome, Fontana Trevi
Photo: Internet (Victor Boyko/Getty Images )

We, unknowingly, tend to reproduce exact same images that were “living realities” of our ancestors, which still are secret realities of our psychic life. You wonder what I am talking about and what it has to do with Fendi’s iconic show. Here it goes:

The Water.  And Fendi models walking over the water or “being born out of water”.


Fendi celebrating 90 years with a subtle mythic show – Heroes and Fairy Tales
7 July 2016, Rome, Fontana Trevi
Photo: Internet (Victor Boyko/Getty Images)

Water in our dreams (and psychoanalysis) symbolizes our unconscious – the dark depth of our psyche. The source or the container of everything from destructive to regenerative, from devilish to divine. In this sense, it is related to “Great Mother” as well. Because our little, tiny, fragile consciousness nourishes on the unconscious. When we feel exhausted, burnt out in life, we shut off to the world and retrieve to that source to recharge and regenerate our life energy.

Now, how this whole spectacle resembles the images and living things I was talking above? Let’s now dig a bit into mythological side of it to see how this relationship to the unconscious manifested itself as mythological symbol. Or just scratch the surface, it is a very complicated symbol.

No need to remind that since we, as mankind, became aware of ourselves, water has been an ever present symbol. Among many other things, it is symbol of regeneration, rebirth and purification. It is that baptismal water that means rebirth in Christianity. Ablution rituals in Islam that stands for purity. There is long list of strict rituals entailing water in Judaism. Regardless religion or faith, full immersion in water is about being reborn out of divine waters to where we will return. In this sense, it is related to the Great Mother, the divine uterus or in psychological terms the unconscious. (Does it explain why there are so many spells and exorcism rituals done with water? Thousand and One Nights series are full of it) I know, it sounds quite absurd when I write like this because it is hard to digest such metaphoric things consciously. But in our unconscious realm where everything gets associated pictorially on feeling-base it makes perfect sense.

Fontana Trevi – divine uterus


Fendi celebrating 90 years with a subtle mythic show – Heroes and Fairy Tales
7 July 2016, Rome, Fontana Trevi
Photo: Internet (Victor Boyko/Getty Images)

Moreover, this scene was over Fontana Trevi. Yes, Trevi is iconic because it is one of the symbols of Rome. But it has its own peculiar significance. People travel hundreds of miles to drop a coin in this water to “make their dreams come true”. With all the mythological monuments that are part of the fountain, Fontana Trevi symbolizes that divine vessel, waters of which hold secrets, recharge, and give hope and new life.

That’s why the whole show with models walking over the water or “being reborn out of water” resembled a ritual of rebirth, where initiator would be immersed in water to be reborn. This is the reason that it had people “wow”.