Moynat Presents Architectural Automations

Architecture, design and travel have long shared many commonalities. For Moynat artistic director Ramesh Nair, architecture and bag design are both destined to "house" human content: a physical and metaphysical container that we identify with, that shapes us as much as we shape it. Bags serve as mobiles dwellings for our possessions: architecture in motion, delineating space. We inhabit our edifices just as we inhabit our bags; each incarnates a space that is intensely personal and simultaneously public in the way that it makes a statement about who we are and who we want to be. Similarly, the physical structure of the human body itself is an architectural form, both container and content for our experiences, our thoughts, our souls.

This year, Moynat explores the relationship between body and space, revealing the minimalist architecture that lends our creations their clean, pure lines, the stylised geometry that links the human form to the receptacle - habitat and inhabited. A dance of complex components, precise gestures and intricate mechanics, distilled to its most pure form, honed to perfection over time and through uncompromising practice.

Each season, at Moynat, we present a different facet of our work, focusing on the elements that come together to compose our bags: from our leathers to our closures and metallic components. This year we bring all these varied elements together under the overarching architecture of the form itself that determines the shape of our bags and objects.

Our new creations break the rules of materials and forms traditionally associated with bags.

Indigo dyed denim, originally associated with workwear, plays a prominent role. Precious crocodile, the ultimate showcase of craftsmanship both in the treatment of the skin and in the making of the bag, is indigo-dyed to house our possessions as denim houses our bodies. Democratisation of materials is not necessarily a down-grading of luxury.

Crocodile and lizard skins with a matte, resilient texture are mirrored in metallic closures with the same treatment.

The iconic Mini Vanity makes a comeback in new, delicately tinted natural stone, a chef d'oeuvre of craftsmanship and ground-breaking use of non-traditional materials. This year, Moynat artisans have surpassed themselves by coaxing stone cladding to curve around the shapes of bags like the Marie-Louise and the Mini Vanity Macaron, an architectural feat in itself.

New versions of the Mini Vanity are introduced: hexagons, cylinders and trapezes offer a geometric feast for the eyes, as many different shapes and sizes as the human body.

Also presented are the Heritage closure with its intricate mechanism revealed under sapphire glass and iridescent metallic finishes on closures and chains. The beauty and complexity of the multi-metal Art Deco closures on the Marlene and Marie-Louise bags recall once again the close relationship between architecture and bags. The high-tech biometric lock on a Mini Vanity that is entirely handmade mirrors the magic of Parisian architecture where a Hausmannian town house may be equipped with cutting-edge technology.