The saddle stitch has not changed

The saddle stitch has not changed. Hermès still uses two needles, one thread, and the same forty-five-degree angle of entry that Thierry Hermès specified in the mid-nineteenth century. The hand pulls tight. The wax holds. A single artisan completes a Kelly bag from first cut to final burnish, and the house will not hire faster.

This is not about heritage. It is about a structural choice made in 1837 and never rescinded.

Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, 1837–1900

Thierry Hermès opened a harness workshop in the Grands Boulevards quarter before moving to 24 Faubourg Saint-Honoré in 1880. Paris was still a city of horses. The atelier made bridles, saddles, and harnesses for carriage trade—first for private clients, then for European courts. The work was technical. Leather had to withstand friction, weather, and the specific weight distribution of a nineteenth-century brougham.

His son Charles-Émile took over in 1880 and turned the workshop into a registered maison. He introduced the first handbag—a small sac designed to hold a rider's saddle—and began to formalise what would become the house codes: hand-stitching, bridle leather, and an insistence on controlling the supply chain from tannery to finished product. By 1900, Hermès was producing its own hardware in-house. The logic was simple. If you cannot source a buckle that will not fail, you make the buckle.

Émile-Maurice Hermès, Charles-Émile's son, encountered the zipper at a Canadian trade show in 1918. He bought the European rights and introduced it to French leather goods. The haut à courroies bag—later renamed the Kelly—appeared in the 1930s. It was a rigid trapezoid with a handle and a flap. The construction was direct: saddle leather, a frame, and the same stitch his grandfather had used on bridles. The bag did not announce itself. It closed.

1950–2000: Grace Kelly, Jean-Louis Dumas, and the Refusal to Scale

In 1956, Grace Kelly held a Hermès bag in front of her stomach to obscure an early pregnancy from photographers. Life ran the image. The bag acquired her name by popular assignment, and the house did not resist. But Hermès did not increase production to meet demand. The waiting list became structural.

Jean-Louis Dumas led the house from 1978 to 2006. He was a fifth-generation family member and the architect of Hermès as it is now understood. Under his direction, the maison acquired John Lobb, Puiforcat, and Saint-Louis crystal. He commissioned Rena Dumas—his wife—to design the first Hermès store interiors, and he brought in designers from outside the family structure: Martin Margiela for womenswear in 1997, Jean Paul Gaultier in 2003.

The Birkin bag arrived in 1984 after a chance encounter between Dumas and Jane Birkin on an Air France flight. She complained that her Kelly was impractical. He sketched a larger, softer bag with an open top and two handles. The house named it after her and made it harder to obtain than the Kelly. Hermès introduced a quota system. A client could not walk in and buy a Birkin. They had to establish a purchase history first. The bag became currency.

Dumas also refused to license the name. In an industry where brand extension was standard practice—fragrances, eyewear, diffusion lines—Hermès made scarves, saddles, and bags in its own ateliers and nothing else unless it could control the process. When the house introduced a ready-to-wear line, it built new workshops. When it entered watchmaking, it acquired a Swiss manufacture.

The LVMH acquisition attempt began in 2010. Bernard Arnault accumulated shares quietly, reaching 23 percent before the family responded. Hermès restructured into a holding company controlled by more than fifty family members, diluted LVMH's stake, and settled into a legal and financial standoff that lasted until 2014. LVMH sold its shares at a significant profit. Hermès remained independent. The episode clarified the house's position: it would not sell, and it would not accelerate.

Nadège Vanhée-Cybulski and the Contemporary Atelier

Nadège Vanhée-Cybulski has been artistic director of Hermès womenswear since 2014. She came from Céline under Phoebe Philo and from The Row, and her work at Hermès is not about reinterpretation. It is about using the atelier's technical capacity to make clothes that require no justification beyond their construction.

Her collections are built on proportion, not silhouette. A spring 2023 coat had sleeves set low and wide, the armscye dropped to allow full range of motion. The shoulder seam sat two inches back from the natural line. The effect was not dramatic. It was exact. The coat moved as the body moved, and the structure appeared only in motion.

She works with the same leather ateliers that make the bags. A fall 2022 blouson was assembled using saddle-stitching, the seams visible and waxed. The piece was not a reference to equestrian heritage. It was an application of a specific technique to a different form. Vanhée-Cybulski has said in interviews that she does not design for a Hermès woman. She designs for the atelier's capability, and the garment finds its wearer.

Her runway shows take place in functional spaces—warehouses, riding schools, empty halls. The spring 2024 presentation was held in the Mobilier National, a state furniture repository. Models walked between stacked chairs and rolled carpets. The clothes were cotton shirting, leather trousers, and knit dresses with no visible fastenings. The collection did not propose a lifestyle. It proposed a shirt.

What Remains

Hermès reported €13.4 billion in revenue in 2023. The waiting list for a Birkin now extends beyond two years in most markets, and the house continues to refuse e-commerce for its leather goods. You cannot buy a Kelly online. You can buy a scarf, a bracelet, or a pair of gloves, but the bags require a store visit, a sales associate, and an purchase history that the house tracks but does not disclose.

The atelier system has not changed. A single artisan still completes each bag. The house runs its own tanneries and controls the full leather supply chain. It has opened new workshops—one in Montereau in 2021, another in Guyenne in 2022—but it has not altered the training period. An Hermès leather artisan apprentices for two years before working unsupervised.

Pierre-Alexis Dumas, Jean-Louis's son, is now artistic director. Axel Dumas, his cousin, is CEO. The family holds more than sixty-six percent of the shares. The structure has not loosened.

The saddle stitch still requires two needles and one thread. The needle enters at forty-five degrees, pulls through, and locks. The next stitch begins where the last one ended. There is no faster method that produces the same result, and Hermès has not looked for one. The hand pulls tight. The wax holds. The bag closes.