Step inside Linda Merad’s whimsical and poetic illustrated universe for Hermès

Linda Merad’s surreal illustrations are populated by a mixture of half human characters that take on the mysterious qualities of animals and plants – like her acrobatic flower figures, or friendly mushroom men. These funny combinations of heads and limbs are full of whimsy, and are a tool for Linda “to convey familiar emotions, but in a curious form”, she says.

In recent years the Paris-based illustrator has been crafting atmospheric editorial commissions using these characters, created using just a few simple lines and an expert colour choices, for the likes of The New York Times and The New Yorker, alongside briefs from small businesses, brands and cultural clients. What’s more, on the side of her commercial practice, the illustrator also started attending a weekly lithography workshop in 2021: “It’s an ancient printing technique that’s quite slow, involving drawing on a stone,” she tells us. Originally intended as a hobby to get her hands a little dirtier and approach drawing in a more experimental way, this aesthetic piqued the curiosity of luxury fashion house Hermès last year.

A brand that regularly invites artists to share in their vision, Hermès got in touch with Linda, to invite some of her whimsical illustrated characters to appearance on their Instagram. “They showed me some of my personal work that they really liked and that fit well with the brand’s aesthetic: shoes kissing, human mushrooms and experimental lithographs,” she says. From then on, Linda was pretty much given a carte blanche to incorporate Hermès products or icons into her illustrated world. The artists first carousel with the brand last September was themed all around love, with kissing sandals and swan couples emerging out of handbags, followed by a second set of illustrations in October that featured a selection of Hermès’ finest hats on legs.

“It was very satisfying because the art director respected and encouraged me to stick to my usual style. It was a happy marriage of worlds and a true collaboration,” the illustrator says. The original drawings for each illustrated story were nearly a metre long, laid out on paper with Linda’s usual tool of choice: a black pencil. These hand drawn compositions were then scanned in, where the illustrator cleans things up and adds all her colour digitally, working with gradients to bring a subtle and warm glow to her scenes.

Hermès also had Linda illustrate a huge campaign to welcome in the new year at the start of 2026, where her Lithograph style was brought to life in a series of animations, made in collaboration with French animator Quentin Klein. “The texture of the material and the handcrafted quality were aspects that particularly interested them,” Linda says. “The challenge was to translate my style from stone to paper.”

Finding that drawing with pen and India ink on paper was the best compromise, Linda created a series of sketches of Hermès objects and imaginary characters set against the backdrop of the sea for the brand’s theme for 2026 ‘L’appel du large’ (Venture beyond). Originally a concept for a singular Instagram animation that Linda sent over several different sketches for, the team wanted to use all of the artist’s iterations on the theme to create a much larger story, extending the illustrations into a website takeover for the first few weeks of January.

If you were lucky enough to have the Hermès website up on your browser at the time, then you would have seen Linda’s show stopping underwater banner heading up the page alongside 12 beautiful icons (characters that were part sky, part sea) for each product category. “The project grew quickly and organically, it hadn’t been planned months in advance: I was briefed in November for a mid-December deadline! So I dedicated myself to it full-time during that period. It was intense but so exciting!” she says. It was the first time Linda had worked infused animation into her works, and her collaboration with Quentin to bring her ink drawings to life was a real source of joy and pleasure: “It was fun and quite impressive to see his interpretation of the movements and his suggestions – they really added a new value to the work,” says Linda. “Being an illustrator is often a solitary job,” she ends, “so I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to be part of such a great team.”