Over the past few years, IRMASWORLD has hosted a short series of workshops in which Jasmin Khezri puts a pen into other people’s hands. We call them Irma workshops. Each one is built around a single task that anyone can learn in an afternoon, and each partner was chosen because the task fits their world.
A workshop with us teaches you a new skill and brings together like-minded people. It also asks you to make something new, to leave your comfort zone and to try something, perhaps for the first time. Here are four we have held so far. There are more to come.
CHRISTMAS CARDS WITH TORY BURCH
Tory Burch. One of the first workshops took place during the pandemic, when shops were closed and meeting in groups was off the table. Together with Tory Burch, we invited participants to make their own Christmas cards. That winter most greetings arrived as messages on a screen, so the idea was to go the other way: paper, colour and a card made by hand for people many of us could not visit that year.
We served Franciacorta, cinnamon tea and homemade cookies decorated in the colours of the latest Tory Burch collection. Each guest was given coloured paper, a cutting knife, glue and cardboard, and we spent hours making cards.
SELF-PORTRAITS WITH PIAGET IN HAMBURG
Piaget. For Piaget, we gathered 20 of the maison’s clients in an old villa in Hamburg. Before anyone picked up a pencil, each guest chose a favourite piece of Piaget Haute Joaillerie to wear. Then they sat down in front of a mirror, and Jasmin taught them to draw their own portrait.
The mirror is what made the format work. Drawing yourself means studying your own face for far longer than you normally would, and with a watch or a piece of jewellery in the frame, the Piaget piece became part of the portrait rather than an addition to it. Each guest took home a picture of themselves wearing the piece they had chosen, drawn in their own hand. A portrait lesson also shows you how you see yourself, which is an exercise of its own.
DRAWING ON PALM LEAF BASKETS
The third workshop was for our own followers. We showed them how to personalise a basket by drawing directly onto it, so that an everyday object belongs to one particular person.
Palm leaf is not paper. The woven surface has ridges and gaps, and the pen has to follow them, so a quick line simply does not hold. You work slowly and precisely, a few centimetres at a time. That constraint turns out to be the appeal: after a while drawing becomes an almost meditative act, and your attention narrows to the next stretch of leaf. The finished basket carries a drawing its owner made by hand, something no shop can sell. And you learn how small steps add up to a bigger picture.
AN ADVENT WREATH FROM LEFTOVER FABRIC
The most recent workshop used material that would otherwise have stayed in a box: offcuts and leftover fabrics from our own collection, the Jasmin Khezri Collection. Each participant made an Advent wreath from them, so no two wreaths came out alike, and fabric cut for clothes found a second use on the table in December.
We served Bûche de Noël and Earl Grey tea while everyone worked, which set the pace for a workshop meant to be taken slowly.
“What every guest takes home is something no one else could have made.”