## The Harness Maker's House

The Harness Maker's House

Thierry Hermès opened his workshop at 24 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in 1837, not to dress women or gentlemen but to equip their horses. He made bridles, saddles, and the full complement of leather goods required by carriage trade in Paris. The shop served coachmen, aristocrats, and Napoleon III, who granted Hermès the title of supplier to the imperial court in 1855. By then, the business had passed to his son Charles-Émile, who expanded the premises and formalised the métier.

There was no grand ambition to become a luxury house. There was leather, and there was skill, and there was a client base that required both. The work was functional. A saddle that failed was not merely disappointing—it was dangerous. This fact established the house's operating principle: make it well, or don't make it.

Charles-Émile's sons, Adolphe and Émile-Maurice, inherited the workshop in 1880. Adolphe managed the atelier. Émile-Maurice, the younger, watched the streets. By the turn of the century, the automobile had begun to replace the horse-drawn carriage. Émile-Maurice did not panic. He travelled to North America, studied the zipper—then a novelty—and returned to Paris with an exclusive licence to use it in France. He also began making luggage and bags for the new motorists, who required cases that could withstand dust and speed.

The first Hermès handbag for women appeared in 1922. It was called the Haut à Courroies, a tall bag with straps, originally designed to carry a saddle. Émile-Maurice's wife used it to hold her personal effects. The design worked. Other clients requested the same. Hermès, without ceremony, had entered the realm of women's accessories.

The Kelly, the Birkin, and the Myth of Scarcity

In 1935, Robert Dumas—Émile-Maurice's son-in-law—joined the house. Dumas was a designer, trained in the decorative arts, and he brought a sense of form that complemented the house's technical rigour. He introduced the first silk scarves in 1937, hand-printed on Lyon silk and finished with a hand-rolled hem. The scarves were not fashion in the contemporary sense. They were closer to prints, small canvases that featured horses, carriages, and the paraphernalia of equestrian life. They sold quietly, then consistently, then in volume.

Dumas also refined the Haut à Courroies into a smaller, more structured silhouette in the 1950s. When Grace Kelly used one to shield her early pregnancy from photographers in 1956, the bag acquired a nickname. Hermès did not orchestrate the moment, but it did not waste it. The Kelly became the house's signature, a piece so tightly associated with a single image that its origins as a saddle bag were almost forgotten.

The Birkin arrived in 1984, after a chance meeting between Jean-Louis Dumas—Robert's son, then chief executive—and Jane Birkin on an Air France flight. Birkin complained that she could not find a leather weekend bag that suited her. Dumas sketched one on a sick bag. The story is true, and it is also the kind of origin myth that luxury houses pay consultants to invent. Hermès simply lived it.

Both bags share a construction method: each is made by a single artisan, start to finish, in the house's ateliers outside Paris. The process takes between twelve and eighteen hours, depending on the size and leather. Hermès does not manufacture these bags on a line. It trains craftspeople—each completes a two-year apprenticeship—and then allows them to work at their own pace. The result is not scarcity for its own sake. It is scarcity as a byproduct of process.

What Remains

The house is still controlled by the Hermès family, now in its sixth generation. Axel Dumas, great-great-great-grandson of Thierry, has served as chief executive since 2014. This is unusual. Most European luxury houses were absorbed by conglomerates in the 1990s and 2000s. Hermès resisted a hostile takeover attempt by LVMH between 2010 and 2014, during which Bernard Arnault quietly accumulated a 23% stake. The family responded by consolidating its shares into a holding company, raising its collective stake above 60%, and making any future acquisition prohibitively difficult.

The resistance was not sentimental. It was structural. Hermès operates on a model that requires patience. The house does not chase quarterly growth. It limits production, controls distribution, and turns away customers when it cannot meet demand without compromising quality. This only works if the people running the business are willing to accept slower returns. Public markets rarely tolerate that. Family ownership does.

Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski has been artistic director of women's ready-to-wear since 2014, following a stint at Céline under Phoebe Philo. Her work at Hermès is quiet, almost to the point of invisibility. The clothes are cut well, use exceptional materials, and do not announce themselves. This is consistent with the house's broader philosophy: the product should justify the price, not the other way around.

Pierre-Alexis Dumas, Axel's cousin, oversees artistic direction across categories. He is a sixth-generation member, a trained architect, and the guardian of the house's visual language. Under his direction, Hermès has maintained a level of coherence that is rare among houses of comparable scale. The scarves still reference equestrianism. The leather goods still prioritise function. The stores still smell faintly of saddle soap.

The Question of Relevance

Hermès does not do collaboration drops. It does not hire celebrity creative directors for three-year stints. It does not release limited-edition sneakers with streetwear brands. It simply continues making the same objects, to the same standard, in the same ateliers, while the rest of the industry cycles through trends.

This approach has two risks. The first is irrelevance—if the house becomes so insular that it loses contact with the market. The second is calcification—if it becomes a museum of its own past, producing objects that no one under fifty understands.

So far, neither has occurred. Hermès reported revenue of €13.4 billion in 2023, an increase of 16% over the prior year. The Birkin and Kelly remain difficult to obtain. The scarves sell. The ready-to-wear, though never the house's primary business, has developed a following among clients who want clothing that lasts longer than a season.

What remains of Thierry Hermès's workshop is not a workshop at all. It is a multinational corporation with thirty-one manufacturing sites, over 20,000 employees, and three hundred stores. But the operating principle has not changed. The house still makes saddles, in small numbers, for clients who ride. It still finishes its scarves by hand. It still assigns each bag to a single artisan.

The question is whether that principle can survive the next generation, or whether scale will eventually demand compromise. Hermès has spent nearly two centuries answering that question the same way. So far, it has been enough.