Delvaux has joined forces with ePaper technology leader E Ink in an unexpected collaboration to be unveiled on Wednesday at the Belgian luxury brand’s presentation during Paris Fashion Week.
Flanking Delvaux’s seasonal offering, the Helios limited-edition capsule collection will showcase four leather designs inspired by E Ink’s color-changing Prism film, a dynamic electronic ink technology that previously enabled BMW to create the world’s first color-changing car.
Now it’s the turn of leather goods, as the project promises to express the pioneering spirit of both parties involved by mixing leather craftsmanship and innovative technology in accessories for daily use.
A design from the Helios capsule collection by Delvaux and E Ink.
Courtesy of Delvaux
“Our Helios project unifies extreme tradition with extreme innovation. Once more, it’s the fruit of an encounter and truly collaborative work, which started more than two years ago between E Ink’s and Delvaux’s teams,” said Delvaux’s chief executive officer Jean-Marc Loubier, recalling how the discovery of E Ink’s innovative technology “which lets you change the appearance of a surface at the touch of a button” at CES in Las Vegas in January 2022 kicked off the partnership.
“This technology, which has evolved from the famous e-paper of e-readers like the Kindle toward color, fascinated us. We immediately saw the potential for our designs and contacted their teams to launch the project,” Loubier said. “What’s impressive about their technology is that changing color consumes very little energy and once the color is displayed, it remains there without any additional power consumption. It was a revolutionary idea for objects as traditional as our leather bags.”
“E Ink has explored how to integrate our films into textiles for a number of years,” echoed Tim O’Malley, associate vice president of the U.S. business unit at E Ink. “In Delvaux we found a partner that had the vision to imagine new possibilities in how the two materials could work together harmoniously. The resulting designs highlight how innovative materials like E Ink Prism can be seamlessly woven into a traditional material, honoring both history and the future.”
A design from the Helios capsule collection by Delvaux and E Ink.
Courtesy of Delvaux
Loubier also sees the tie-up as an innovation accelerator that “makes our legacy very active” and “opens the way to many possibilities for the future.”
“At Delvaux we are constantly interrogating what we propose. We know where we come from — we have a very long history, nearly 200 years old; we are the inventor of the modern handbag, an innovation we registered in 1908. We manufacture in our own workshops. Our legacy is in motion as we always try to enrich what we do,” he said.
Cue the way the two parties reinterpreted Delvaux’s staple designs such as Le Caprice geometric handbag and Le Pin bucket style, interweaving E Ink’s film with leather in a nod to origami artist Tomoko Fuse.
A design from the Helios capsule collection by Delvaux and E Ink.
Courtesy of Delvaux
“The challenge was to marry this futuristic material with our traditional approach,” Loubier said. “We reinvented our braiding techniques, originally developed for leather, to adapt them to e-paper while preserving the aesthetics and functionality of our bags.”
“It was a major challenge to create these weavings using a material as delicate as e-paper. Take, for example, the Helios ‘Pixel’ model, where three large e-paper panels were woven with leather strips, using rivets to hold everything together, without directly touching the e-paper,” said the executive. On other models, such as the Helios “Psyché,” the challenge was to maintain the circular visual effect albeit the fragility of the material.
While pricing was not disclosed, the collection will be available in only 100 pieces in select stores.
