Hermes in print
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First picture is from German Vogue accessories and the second from L´officielle.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/r...86891200&en=8b155150ed63e505&ei=5070&emc=eta1
if the link doesn't work the article is below!
Enjoy!
if the link doesn't work the article is below!
Enjoy!
Hermès Tempts the Men of Wall Street
Tina Fineberg for The New York Times
Rena Dumas is the architect of the Hermès store at 15 Broad Street, which opened June 21. To draw men in the predominantly male area, the store moved ties to the front, but it still carries scarves and other articles for women.
By CLAIRE WILSON
Published: July 29, 2007
PEOPLE who live in the financial district of Manhattan do not have a major supermarket to shop in, but if they need a $4,700 custom-made leather dressage saddle or a $47,000 limited edition alligator briefcase, they can slip into the new Hermès store at 15 Broad Street, across from the New York Stock
Enlarge This Image
Tina Fineberg for The New York Times
Rena Dumas.
Enlarge This Image
Tina Fineberg for The New York Times
Tina Fineberg for The New York Times
Hermès, the 170-year-old luxury goods company from Paris, opened the store, its second in New York, on June 21, with a special focus on the men who work in the surrounding banks and financial institutions and on the areas growing residential population, the majority of which is male.
The 4,800-square-foot, single-level retail store, designed by the Paris interior architecture firm RDAI, resembles the other 243 Hermès shops around the globe. But the traditional arrangement of merchandise has been reconfigured to bring mens clothes and accessories to the front of the store and to the attention of potential male shoppers. The silk twill scarves and signature handbags for women that are usually right inside the door have been edged aside by colorful rows of neckties.
We sense a lot of potential with that clientele and we want to be able to serve them quickly with shirts, ties, suits and shoes, said Robert B. Chavez, the president and chief executive of Hermès USA. The store is in a 42-story building in the traffic-free pedestrian zone between Wall Street and Exchange Place. The building is the former headquarters of J. P. Morgan; it was converted two years ago to condominiums designed by Philippe Starck. The new shop is the 17th Hermès store in the United States; the store at 691 Madison Avenue remains the American flagship. Hermès products are also sold across the country in 37 retail stores like Bergdorf Goodman.
At the new store, where a black, special edition, leather-trimmed Harley-Davidson Fat Boy motorcycle was on display in one of the windows last week, the entrance is a glass cube trimmed with a cast iron Greek geometric border that is typical of Hermès stores.
The rows of colorful neckwear, including one style with a bull and bear motif, against a backdrop of American cherry wood, make an unusual visual statement that is intended to catch male eyes from the street.
The wall of ties continues around a corner into the mens shop. Its layout is a near-perfect square with an open center and 1,100 square feet of stockroom and administrative space at the rear. Areas dedicated to fragrances and jewelry for both men and women flank the mens area on either end and help smooth the transition to other small departments.
Rena Dumas, the chief architect of RDAI and of all Hermès stores, describes the interior design as a play on volume and open space that uses walls and a mélange of starkly modern and traditional materials to define each merchandise area as though it were a separate shop, but with unifying design elements.
The store as a whole, however, feels wide open and spacious. You can be in one place like the womens area, but see everything else thats going on, said Ms. Dumas, who is the wife of the former chief executive, Jean-Louis Dumas, who retired from Hermès in 2006.
A corridor that runs around the interior of the store creates what Ms. Dumas calls a promenade, which is intended to allow shoppers to discover the kinds of merchandise on display. It is paved with the same traditional French mosaic tiles used in the main store in Paris, and illuminated by a mix of traditional early 20th century glass light fixtures and modern recessed lights. Cast iron Greek geometric borders inset in the ceiling further define the walkway.
The promenade leads customers through the mens department to jewelry, then to an area dedicated to porcelain table settings and crystal glassware. Cherry and glass parsons-style tables set for a party are a foil to the thick white, opaque shelves that hold more dinnerware patterns and, farther down, a bright array of terrycloth velour beach towels and family-size beach blankets.
A partition of striped, sand-blasted glass separates the womens section from the rest of the store. Smaller than the mens section, the womens area is intimate and the opposite in look and feel from the mens area. It is modern and bathed in natural light, with glass, mirrors and discreet TV monitors featuring recent Hermès runway shows.
The area at the center of the store is reserved for the companys signature products, which are geared to women: the scarves, the well-known handbags like the Kelly (named for Princess Grace) and the Birkin (named for actress Jane Birkin), as well as luggage. In that area, which Ms. Dumas calls the courtyard, lights are brighter and ceilings are higher than those along the promenade.
Hermès Wall Street is the first of several high-end retailers coming to the neighborhood. They include Thomas Pink, which opened within the last month, as well as Tiffany & Company and the Italian menswear companies Canali and Brioni, which are scheduled to open in the next year.
The new Hermès is a tapestry of light and dark, glossy and flat, high-tech and historic that reflects the architecture of the neighborhood.
Ms. Dumas compares the textures of the store to a musical composition.
The rhythm changes, like music that we play loudly then softly, she said. We are like orchestra conductors.
Rena Dumas is the architect of the Hermès store at 15 Broad Street, which opened June 21. To draw men in the predominantly male area, the store moved ties to the front, but it still carries scarves and other articles for women.
By CLAIRE WILSON
Published: July 29, 2007
PEOPLE who live in the financial district of Manhattan do not have a major supermarket to shop in, but if they need a $4,700 custom-made leather dressage saddle or a $47,000 limited edition alligator briefcase, they can slip into the new Hermès store at 15 Broad Street, across from the New York Stock
Enlarge This Image
Tina Fineberg for The New York TimesRena Dumas.
Enlarge This Image
Tina Fineberg for The New York Times
Hermès, the 170-year-old luxury goods company from Paris, opened the store, its second in New York, on June 21, with a special focus on the men who work in the surrounding banks and financial institutions and on the areas growing residential population, the majority of which is male.
The 4,800-square-foot, single-level retail store, designed by the Paris interior architecture firm RDAI, resembles the other 243 Hermès shops around the globe. But the traditional arrangement of merchandise has been reconfigured to bring mens clothes and accessories to the front of the store and to the attention of potential male shoppers. The silk twill scarves and signature handbags for women that are usually right inside the door have been edged aside by colorful rows of neckties.
We sense a lot of potential with that clientele and we want to be able to serve them quickly with shirts, ties, suits and shoes, said Robert B. Chavez, the president and chief executive of Hermès USA. The store is in a 42-story building in the traffic-free pedestrian zone between Wall Street and Exchange Place. The building is the former headquarters of J. P. Morgan; it was converted two years ago to condominiums designed by Philippe Starck. The new shop is the 17th Hermès store in the United States; the store at 691 Madison Avenue remains the American flagship. Hermès products are also sold across the country in 37 retail stores like Bergdorf Goodman.
At the new store, where a black, special edition, leather-trimmed Harley-Davidson Fat Boy motorcycle was on display in one of the windows last week, the entrance is a glass cube trimmed with a cast iron Greek geometric border that is typical of Hermès stores.
The rows of colorful neckwear, including one style with a bull and bear motif, against a backdrop of American cherry wood, make an unusual visual statement that is intended to catch male eyes from the street.
The wall of ties continues around a corner into the mens shop. Its layout is a near-perfect square with an open center and 1,100 square feet of stockroom and administrative space at the rear. Areas dedicated to fragrances and jewelry for both men and women flank the mens area on either end and help smooth the transition to other small departments.
Rena Dumas, the chief architect of RDAI and of all Hermès stores, describes the interior design as a play on volume and open space that uses walls and a mélange of starkly modern and traditional materials to define each merchandise area as though it were a separate shop, but with unifying design elements.
The store as a whole, however, feels wide open and spacious. You can be in one place like the womens area, but see everything else thats going on, said Ms. Dumas, who is the wife of the former chief executive, Jean-Louis Dumas, who retired from Hermès in 2006.
A corridor that runs around the interior of the store creates what Ms. Dumas calls a promenade, which is intended to allow shoppers to discover the kinds of merchandise on display. It is paved with the same traditional French mosaic tiles used in the main store in Paris, and illuminated by a mix of traditional early 20th century glass light fixtures and modern recessed lights. Cast iron Greek geometric borders inset in the ceiling further define the walkway.
The promenade leads customers through the mens department to jewelry, then to an area dedicated to porcelain table settings and crystal glassware. Cherry and glass parsons-style tables set for a party are a foil to the thick white, opaque shelves that hold more dinnerware patterns and, farther down, a bright array of terrycloth velour beach towels and family-size beach blankets.
A partition of striped, sand-blasted glass separates the womens section from the rest of the store. Smaller than the mens section, the womens area is intimate and the opposite in look and feel from the mens area. It is modern and bathed in natural light, with glass, mirrors and discreet TV monitors featuring recent Hermès runway shows.
The area at the center of the store is reserved for the companys signature products, which are geared to women: the scarves, the well-known handbags like the Kelly (named for Princess Grace) and the Birkin (named for actress Jane Birkin), as well as luggage. In that area, which Ms. Dumas calls the courtyard, lights are brighter and ceilings are higher than those along the promenade.
Hermès Wall Street is the first of several high-end retailers coming to the neighborhood. They include Thomas Pink, which opened within the last month, as well as Tiffany & Company and the Italian menswear companies Canali and Brioni, which are scheduled to open in the next year.
The new Hermès is a tapestry of light and dark, glossy and flat, high-tech and historic that reflects the architecture of the neighborhood.
Ms. Dumas compares the textures of the store to a musical composition.
The rhythm changes, like music that we play loudly then softly, she said. We are like orchestra conductors.
Who wouldn't love to live right above Hermes?
http://www.nypost.com/php/realestate/display_indiv_prop.php?client_prop_id=1004881722
http://www.nypost.com/php/realestate/display_indiv_prop.php?client_prop_id=1004881722
This is an excellent peek into the workings of the house of H. I reallly appreciate that you posted it in its entirety, MrsM! 
Hi Everyone,
This is an interview from Saturday's New York Times .... I copied the enitre thing because the site is becoming more private and I have had trouble when giving people links there....so I apologize if the paste if lousy or oversized, as many of you know, my tech-skills are less than desirable.
Saturday Interview
Hermès Is So Much More Than Silk Scarves
David X. Prutting/PatrickMcMullan.com
Patrick Thomas, the chief of Hermès, was at the opening of the store on Wall Street in New York.
By TRACIE ROZHON
Published: July 28, 2007
Patrick Thomas, the elusive chief executive at Hermès elusive to reporters and analysts at least seemed downright expansive over lunch recently at his hotel only a few blocks from his new store in New York Citys financial district.
The companys Wall Street store opening was several days away, but the windows were already done: a motorcycle with a black leather outfit on one side ($5,700), and a deconstructed horse sculpture on the other, with a superb black saddle resting on the window ledge, safely behind glass. ($4,500).
For those who think of the company, which has $1.9 billion in sales, as the purveyor of conservative silk scarves with bridle motifs and capacious handbags carried by Grace Kelly, the Hermès windows were eye-opening.
So was Mr. Thomas, who, despite his English-sounding name, is very French. He is the first nonfamily member ever to run the company, which is public but still very much controlled by the descendants of the founder. He offered opinions on the companys philosophy, its pricing and some as-yet-unannounced new ventures. Following are excerpts:
Q. Do you consider Hermès a daring company?
A. Yes, within reason. The motorcycle is just the modern expression of our origin: the horse. And the horse in the window was made with spare parts from a car. We loved it, we bought it. I have no idea who made it.
Q. Do you ride?
A. No, I did a few times, thats all. Some members of the family have horses.
Q. Hermès is known as a leather goods brand run by perfectionists. Are you a perfectionist?
A. If you saw the reasons why some things are rejected by our craftsmen, you would say: These people are crazy. The quest for perfection is crazy, but we all insist on it.
Q. One luxury analyst told me that Hermès is a model every other luxury brand aspires to, but added that he would like to see better earnings growth and momentum because you are so firmly at the top of the pyramid.
A. I would agree with that statement.
Q. And what about your sales in Japan?
A. Yes, there has been sort of a stabilization of that market; it is still a very big market, it is still a quarter of our business.
Q. You have two classes of stock ownership, dont you?
A: Yes, there are active partners and there are sleeping partners. The active partners make up the controlling board. They appoint the C.E.O. They can sack me tomorrow morning. But they give me more or less freedom just like a normal company.
Q. Ive heard that the family members have a pact not to sell their shares.
A. Yes, the family has a pact to hold onto its shares for at least six years; its a general pact. Its clearly not their intention to sell, but as you say, never say never! As long as the fifth generation is around ... I think the sixth generation will stick to it, too. There is enormous loyalty which has been transmitted to the children.
Q. Whats happening with the luxury market? Many have predicted it will start to weaken, and some companies have in fact weakened.
A. Today much of what we call luxury is no longer luxury. Call it luxury if you want, but some companies no longer have the quality. At Hermès, a woman walked in with a saddle not long ago, and she complained it needed restitching. We checked the records we keep all records, even of repairs and it was her grandmothers saddle, purchased in 1937. We fixed it, of course.
Q. What fields are you branching into? I know last year you began selling smaller, lighter and cheaper silk scarves $205 versus $325?
A. We are planning now for the next step: to develop to extend and boost the house. We call it art of the house: bath towels, robes, vases, furniture, luminaires. There are plenty of things in the pipeline: new lines of ties, dresses, jewelry.
Q. Your Birkin handbags sell for as much as $10,000 maybe more, depending on the type of skins used. Is there any limit, a point where consumers will say: No, not one euro more?
A. There is always a price limit. The best example is Japan. This year the yen went down sharply against the euro, so we had to increase our prices. Many people told us they were not going to pay; everyone is sensitive to price.
Q. I was surprised to see Hermès in an airport somewhere. Is an airport boutique consistent with your companys refined image?
A. I would say we do them less and less, but wherever we are, we make the shops larger and larger. Anything smaller than 200 square meters is difficult. The new Wall Street store is 500 square meters and I would have loved to see 600.
Q. Why didnt you get it?
A. We loved that location.
Q. Are you building more shops in the United States?
A. Yes, we are going to expand, but not necessarily the number of doors. We will definitely increase the size. We opened a store in Charlotte in March, 300 square meters, and we have 17 large stores in the United States. In five years, we expect to have 23.
Q. Do you have enough of a variety of items to fill all these bigger stores?
A. We have a very broad range of products: 50,000 SKUs. If we want to show our diversity, we need a significant size, we cant have a series of boutiques.
Q. Are you going to be expanding your clothing selections?
A. Did you know that fashion makes up 25 percent of our business? Jean-Paul Gaultier succeeded Martin Margiela when he resigned and sold his name to Diesel. Diesel said he had to work exclusively for Diesel. Jean-Louis Dumas, my predecessor, called Gaultier and asked: Do you know anyone who could replace him? Two weeks later, they met and Jean-Louis said: Do you have a name? and Gaultier said Me. Jean-Louis Dumas was over the moon!
Q. And you dont call that choice daring?
A. Its a nice combination of traditional materials and a very now designer. We are daring, but daring in a very natural way.
Q. Luxury companies used to pride themselves on only making their clothes in, say, Italy. Does Hermès make anything out of France?
A. Well, we do buy some silk in Brazil, but we weave it ourselves in France, we print it ourselves and we hand roll it ourselves. Our watches are made in Switzerland, and some of our cashmere comes from India. Eighty percent of what we sell is made in-house.
Q. Is there pressure from Wall Street to produce more goods more cheaply, perhaps doing more in other countries?
A. Many people look at the short term. The family is very good, they understand the long term. They will say: This is a good project: take five years to develop it. It took us 10 years to develop our fashion business; it took us at least 10 years for tableware, but now we are happy. If we started to produce and sell cheaper bags, with a big H, our profit would explode. But then there would be no Hermès in five years.
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Gorgeous woman on the street photographed at
http://facehunter.blogspot.com/ with her black Birkin. http://bp3.blogger.com/_6UzdmF8O-Oo/RsoWS_KQYJI/AAAAAAAADAM/QAkKiWK6bis/s1600-h/R0082335.jpg
One of us?
http://facehunter.blogspot.com/ with her black Birkin. http://bp3.blogger.com/_6UzdmF8O-Oo/RsoWS_KQYJI/AAAAAAAADAM/QAkKiWK6bis/s1600-h/R0082335.jpg
One of us?
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Wonderful article on Hermes in Vanity Fair.
The words that jump right out at me are "humility" and "refinement" as a mantra for family members and Hermes products and yet you read stories on how how some would be clients are treated awfully by some SAs - I think these bad apples just don't get the meaning of "humility" and "refinement." One can be both without being overly familiar to a stranger IMHO.
The words that jump right out at me are "humility" and "refinement" as a mantra for family members and Hermes products and yet you read stories on how how some would be clients are treated awfully by some SAs - I think these bad apples just don't get the meaning of "humility" and "refinement." One can be both without being overly familiar to a stranger IMHO.