Hermes in print
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I have found the Hermes article from Vogue Paris (it's photos hope you can read something the flash might disturb your reading....) so I hope you enjoy
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Not sure if this is where to post it but in the new Town & Country mag there is a THREE page Hermes ad!!! Showing a few bags, leather trench, and even a horse halter and crop lol!! Very cool pics -- plus.....in the magazine itself there is a page on winter gloves with a pr. of orange Hermes gloves!
Fashion & Style: Ain't nothing like the real thing, baby
Independent, The (London), Jun 3, 2004 by Susannah Frankel
Sitting on my desk at the moment is one of the most heinous products I have ever seen. That's saying quite something given that I've been sent everything from over-the-knee beige corduroy boots with a wood veneer block heel (lovely!) to any number of comedy thongs (edible, diamante-scattered, etc) in my time. None the less, this specimen in particular caught my eye: it is a fuchsia leather handbag with gleaming chrome fastenings. Nothing much wrong with that, I hear you all cry, apart from the fact that it's pink, of course, but there's no accounting for taste. But what's wrong with my bag - and it's for sale at reputable outlets in London and New York - is that it is yet another woeful copy of the Birkin.
The original Birkin was first designed, of course, by the oldest and grandest status label of them all, Hermes, and named after the actress, Jane, back in 1984. It is a thing of rare beauty. No copy comes close.
It is 20 years old this year and one could be forgiven for thinking that no other bag exists. For my part, I've taken - sad, bag- spotting type that I am - to counting Birkins on my travels around town. Only this morning in west London I've seen two in the space of an hour: a semi-transparent lilac rubber one (who on earth dreams up these things?) and a plum-coloured mock-croc one (I'm assuming it was mock as crocs, we all know, are thin on the ground these days). Whatever, there are literally hundreds of Birkin bags on the street now. One minor detail: none of them are real.
The genuine article has its roots in the 19th-century saddle bag, the sac haut a courroies - Hermes, which also has its roots in saddlery neatly enough, still makes these, mostly for men. The Birkin also owes more than a little to the more formal Kelly bag, introduced in the Thirties and named in 1956 after the actress Grace who was more than happy to endorse perhaps the first must-have handbag of all time.
Today, the waiting lists for both Birkin and Kelly are closed. Entire episodes of Sex and The City have, in the past, been given up to the quest for the Birkin in particular. The problem, says Hermes, is that there simply aren't enough cow hides of sufficient quality to meet demand. The powers that be at the company spend an awful lot of time rejecting poor- quality skins and an equal amount of time rejecting desperate callers happy to pay upwards of pounds 3,000 for a handbag.
The rarity of the real thing must go at least some way towards explaining why so many copies are currently flooding the market. For its part, Hermes is understandably not averse to filing lawsuits against anyone who is actually suggesting their copies are a Birkin or Kelly. A little less than a year ago now, while fighting the distribution of the "Jellykelly", actually a rubber version of the Birkin, in the US, the company issued this statement: "Hermes of Paris is committed to vigorously protecting its intellectual property rights in the Birkin bag and its other distinctive designs." And who can blame them?
What is more difficult to control, however, is the fact that reputable designers are now coming up with bags that, though called something else, are only very thinly disguised interpretations of the Birkin made from less desirable materials and, therefore, available to a wider market. Like the pink Birkin wannabe sent to me.
It says quite something for the power of the Birkin that this has in no way lessened its appeal. Poor designer imitations may serve to damage the original in many cases, but where the Birkin - and indeed Kelly - is concerned they only make the real thing seem more special still. Over at Hermes HQ, meanwhile, a new designer - one M. Jean Paul Gaultier no less - is busily updating both Birkin and Kelly to ensure that Hermes design innovation - as well as its craftsmanship and materials - remains second to none.
Come autumn those who care about such things will be able to buy the small but perfectly formed "Kelly pochette" in various skins, from suede to crocodile. The former, we are reliably informed, might even be available to the humble likes of you and me: basic suede is easily come by, you see. Well-nigh impossible to lay hands on will be the new "Shoulder B", the same width as a Birkin but half the depth and with shoulder straps. Ladies, it's the bag of the autumn/winter season. The copies will no doubt reach a high street near you even before the originals arrive. But the copies, fashion friends, simply won't do.
Copyright 2004 Independent Newspapers UK Limited
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.
Independent, The (London), Jun 3, 2004 by Susannah Frankel
Sitting on my desk at the moment is one of the most heinous products I have ever seen. That's saying quite something given that I've been sent everything from over-the-knee beige corduroy boots with a wood veneer block heel (lovely!) to any number of comedy thongs (edible, diamante-scattered, etc) in my time. None the less, this specimen in particular caught my eye: it is a fuchsia leather handbag with gleaming chrome fastenings. Nothing much wrong with that, I hear you all cry, apart from the fact that it's pink, of course, but there's no accounting for taste. But what's wrong with my bag - and it's for sale at reputable outlets in London and New York - is that it is yet another woeful copy of the Birkin.
The original Birkin was first designed, of course, by the oldest and grandest status label of them all, Hermes, and named after the actress, Jane, back in 1984. It is a thing of rare beauty. No copy comes close.
It is 20 years old this year and one could be forgiven for thinking that no other bag exists. For my part, I've taken - sad, bag- spotting type that I am - to counting Birkins on my travels around town. Only this morning in west London I've seen two in the space of an hour: a semi-transparent lilac rubber one (who on earth dreams up these things?) and a plum-coloured mock-croc one (I'm assuming it was mock as crocs, we all know, are thin on the ground these days). Whatever, there are literally hundreds of Birkin bags on the street now. One minor detail: none of them are real.
The genuine article has its roots in the 19th-century saddle bag, the sac haut a courroies - Hermes, which also has its roots in saddlery neatly enough, still makes these, mostly for men. The Birkin also owes more than a little to the more formal Kelly bag, introduced in the Thirties and named in 1956 after the actress Grace who was more than happy to endorse perhaps the first must-have handbag of all time.
Today, the waiting lists for both Birkin and Kelly are closed. Entire episodes of Sex and The City have, in the past, been given up to the quest for the Birkin in particular. The problem, says Hermes, is that there simply aren't enough cow hides of sufficient quality to meet demand. The powers that be at the company spend an awful lot of time rejecting poor- quality skins and an equal amount of time rejecting desperate callers happy to pay upwards of pounds 3,000 for a handbag.
The rarity of the real thing must go at least some way towards explaining why so many copies are currently flooding the market. For its part, Hermes is understandably not averse to filing lawsuits against anyone who is actually suggesting their copies are a Birkin or Kelly. A little less than a year ago now, while fighting the distribution of the "Jellykelly", actually a rubber version of the Birkin, in the US, the company issued this statement: "Hermes of Paris is committed to vigorously protecting its intellectual property rights in the Birkin bag and its other distinctive designs." And who can blame them?
What is more difficult to control, however, is the fact that reputable designers are now coming up with bags that, though called something else, are only very thinly disguised interpretations of the Birkin made from less desirable materials and, therefore, available to a wider market. Like the pink Birkin wannabe sent to me.
It says quite something for the power of the Birkin that this has in no way lessened its appeal. Poor designer imitations may serve to damage the original in many cases, but where the Birkin - and indeed Kelly - is concerned they only make the real thing seem more special still. Over at Hermes HQ, meanwhile, a new designer - one M. Jean Paul Gaultier no less - is busily updating both Birkin and Kelly to ensure that Hermes design innovation - as well as its craftsmanship and materials - remains second to none.
Come autumn those who care about such things will be able to buy the small but perfectly formed "Kelly pochette" in various skins, from suede to crocodile. The former, we are reliably informed, might even be available to the humble likes of you and me: basic suede is easily come by, you see. Well-nigh impossible to lay hands on will be the new "Shoulder B", the same width as a Birkin but half the depth and with shoulder straps. Ladies, it's the bag of the autumn/winter season. The copies will no doubt reach a high street near you even before the originals arrive. But the copies, fashion friends, simply won't do.
Copyright 2004 Independent Newspapers UK Limited
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.
International Herald Tribune
August 28, 2006
When the packaging makes it perfect
* Hermès is mentioned which I highlight in orange
For my goddaughter Delilah's ninth birthday, I gave her a Tiffany starfish pendant by Elsa Peretti. Not an original choice, I admit. But it's pretty, and so is Delilah. It's girlish, reducing the risk of confiscation by her brothers. It's timely, as her parents have just bought a weekend house by the sea. And it was delivered in a blue Tiffany box, which, as Delilah and her family have recently moved to Brooklyn from London, made it perfect for a Park Slope Princess.
Would I have bought that pendant without the packaging? I'm not sure, but the thought of Delilah opening that duck egg blue box tied with white satin ribbon certainly clinched my choice. Those boxes date to 1837, when Charles Lewis Tiffany decreed that all of the packaging and advertising of his newly opened Manhattan store should be in exactly the same shade of blue. Tiffany has since registered the boxes and Tiffany Blue as trademarks. Like Hermès's gorgeous orange boxes, a Tiffany Blue box is a rare example of packaging that is as covetable as its contents.
As good examples go, it is hard to quibble with one that has flourished for 169 years, making it all the more surprising that more luxury labels haven't taken Tiffany's cue by introducing equally seductive packaging.
Most have opted for one of two default design styles for their boxes, bags and logos (or visual identities, as graphic designers call them). One style belongs to what we'll dub the Voguettes. These are the brands with forgettably pleasant packaging, whose logos look more or less like Bodoni, the elegant serif typeface that Alexander Liberman adapted in 1947 to create the lettering that spells out Vogue's title on the magazine cover. Now that style seems very Vogueish, which is presumably why Giorgio Armani, Burberry, Dior, Piaget, Pucci and Vera Wang have adopted similar typefaces.
The second camp consists of the Chanelles, who have taken their typographic lead from (you guessed it) the crisp sans-serif logo and monochrome bags and boxes chosen by Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel for her Paris couture house. Now this was a woman who was so brand-savvy that a chandelier in her Rue Cambon apartment dangled with rock crystal figures of the number five, for No.5 perfume, and her company's double C insignia. Among the Chanelles are Balenciaga, Dolce & Gabbana, Marc Jacobs, Calvin Klein and Rochas.
There is nothing wrong with the visual identities of the brands in either camp, but there is nothing special about them either. Tellingly, Tiffany is a typographic Voguette, and its packaging isn't particularly striking, yet it distinguishes its visual identity by using that beautiful blue so cleverly. Whereas Hermès is unmistakably Hermès in every detail: the idiosyncratic shape of the letters in its logo, the choice of colors, the quality of the paper used in its bags and boxes and the beautiful embroidered ribbons that are regularly redesigned to reflect different themes. Only a few other brands have come to close to matching its high standards.
One is Yves Saint Laurent. Where would it be without the spindly initials, which were dashed off as a favor by the illustrator Cassandre for the young Yves Saint Laurent when he founded his couture house in 1962? Comme des Garçons deserves an honorable mention for subverting its Chanelle logo by adopting a five- pronged star as the cedilla, as does Azzedine Alaïa for the great archive boxes with buckled leather straps that he uses as shoe boxes.
A few brands come closer still. Take Martin Margiela. It was a gutsy move for a young Belgian designer to identify his clothes with nothing other than a blank white square of cotton attached with four clumsy stitches when he started out in the late 1980s. And it was equally gutsy of Margiela to package them in blank white cotton bags when he opened his stores. But both tactics work. Do you know anyone who unpicks those white stitches from their Margiela knits?
Then there is Net-a-Porter, the online fashion boutique whose packaging owes more to the grand days of deluxe department stores than to bubble- wrapped e-commerce. It is a happy moment whenever Net-a-Porter delivers. The No.1 reason: You have finally snaffled that elusive Marc Jacobs tunic. No. 2: you get to play the Dominique Sanda role in Bertolucci's "1900" by flinging open one of its enormous, tissue paper-stuffed, ribbon-tied boxes.
Net-a-Porter obsesses over every element of its packaging, not least because its founder, Natalie Massenet, realized that, in e-commerce, it is the company's only physical link with the customer. The boxes are designed so that people will want to keep them, with a logo that is big enough to remind them of the brand name, but not so big as to be obtrusive. The bags and boxes remain the same -another reminder of the brand - but Net-a-Porter freshens things up at the start of each season by changing the color of the tissue paper and the style of ribbon.
And now there is Lanvin. Until a few weeks ago it was just another Voguette, but then its creative director, Alber Elbaz, unveiled his new packaging, and it is beautiful. Everything is blue - not Tiffany Blue, but Elbaz's zestier take on the founder Jeanne Lanvin's favorite shade of forget-me-not blue, which she first spotted in a Fra Angelico fresco. The logo is a reworking of a 1907 drawing, by the illustrator Paul Iribe, of Jeanne Lanvin and her 10-year-old daughter, Marguerite, dressed for a ball. The new shoe boxes are shaped like antique library files and tied with black satin ribbon. It is not as though I've ever found it easy to resist the clothing in the Lanvin store on Rue Faubourg Saint- Honoré in Paris, but from now on it will be impossible.
Don't get me wrong. No packaging, not even Lanvin's, can ever matter more than its contents. But great packaging makes shopping more fun, and, as Tiffany has proved, occasionally elicits cash from impressionable people like me. And judging by eBay's thriving online trade in empty Hermès boxes, it can even be an investment.
August 28, 2006
When the packaging makes it perfect
* Hermès is mentioned which I highlight in orange
For my goddaughter Delilah's ninth birthday, I gave her a Tiffany starfish pendant by Elsa Peretti. Not an original choice, I admit. But it's pretty, and so is Delilah. It's girlish, reducing the risk of confiscation by her brothers. It's timely, as her parents have just bought a weekend house by the sea. And it was delivered in a blue Tiffany box, which, as Delilah and her family have recently moved to Brooklyn from London, made it perfect for a Park Slope Princess.
Would I have bought that pendant without the packaging? I'm not sure, but the thought of Delilah opening that duck egg blue box tied with white satin ribbon certainly clinched my choice. Those boxes date to 1837, when Charles Lewis Tiffany decreed that all of the packaging and advertising of his newly opened Manhattan store should be in exactly the same shade of blue. Tiffany has since registered the boxes and Tiffany Blue as trademarks. Like Hermès's gorgeous orange boxes, a Tiffany Blue box is a rare example of packaging that is as covetable as its contents.
As good examples go, it is hard to quibble with one that has flourished for 169 years, making it all the more surprising that more luxury labels haven't taken Tiffany's cue by introducing equally seductive packaging.
Most have opted for one of two default design styles for their boxes, bags and logos (or visual identities, as graphic designers call them). One style belongs to what we'll dub the Voguettes. These are the brands with forgettably pleasant packaging, whose logos look more or less like Bodoni, the elegant serif typeface that Alexander Liberman adapted in 1947 to create the lettering that spells out Vogue's title on the magazine cover. Now that style seems very Vogueish, which is presumably why Giorgio Armani, Burberry, Dior, Piaget, Pucci and Vera Wang have adopted similar typefaces.
The second camp consists of the Chanelles, who have taken their typographic lead from (you guessed it) the crisp sans-serif logo and monochrome bags and boxes chosen by Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel for her Paris couture house. Now this was a woman who was so brand-savvy that a chandelier in her Rue Cambon apartment dangled with rock crystal figures of the number five, for No.5 perfume, and her company's double C insignia. Among the Chanelles are Balenciaga, Dolce & Gabbana, Marc Jacobs, Calvin Klein and Rochas.
There is nothing wrong with the visual identities of the brands in either camp, but there is nothing special about them either. Tellingly, Tiffany is a typographic Voguette, and its packaging isn't particularly striking, yet it distinguishes its visual identity by using that beautiful blue so cleverly. Whereas Hermès is unmistakably Hermès in every detail: the idiosyncratic shape of the letters in its logo, the choice of colors, the quality of the paper used in its bags and boxes and the beautiful embroidered ribbons that are regularly redesigned to reflect different themes. Only a few other brands have come to close to matching its high standards.
One is Yves Saint Laurent. Where would it be without the spindly initials, which were dashed off as a favor by the illustrator Cassandre for the young Yves Saint Laurent when he founded his couture house in 1962? Comme des Garçons deserves an honorable mention for subverting its Chanelle logo by adopting a five- pronged star as the cedilla, as does Azzedine Alaïa for the great archive boxes with buckled leather straps that he uses as shoe boxes.
A few brands come closer still. Take Martin Margiela. It was a gutsy move for a young Belgian designer to identify his clothes with nothing other than a blank white square of cotton attached with four clumsy stitches when he started out in the late 1980s. And it was equally gutsy of Margiela to package them in blank white cotton bags when he opened his stores. But both tactics work. Do you know anyone who unpicks those white stitches from their Margiela knits?
Then there is Net-a-Porter, the online fashion boutique whose packaging owes more to the grand days of deluxe department stores than to bubble- wrapped e-commerce. It is a happy moment whenever Net-a-Porter delivers. The No.1 reason: You have finally snaffled that elusive Marc Jacobs tunic. No. 2: you get to play the Dominique Sanda role in Bertolucci's "1900" by flinging open one of its enormous, tissue paper-stuffed, ribbon-tied boxes.
Net-a-Porter obsesses over every element of its packaging, not least because its founder, Natalie Massenet, realized that, in e-commerce, it is the company's only physical link with the customer. The boxes are designed so that people will want to keep them, with a logo that is big enough to remind them of the brand name, but not so big as to be obtrusive. The bags and boxes remain the same -another reminder of the brand - but Net-a-Porter freshens things up at the start of each season by changing the color of the tissue paper and the style of ribbon.
And now there is Lanvin. Until a few weeks ago it was just another Voguette, but then its creative director, Alber Elbaz, unveiled his new packaging, and it is beautiful. Everything is blue - not Tiffany Blue, but Elbaz's zestier take on the founder Jeanne Lanvin's favorite shade of forget-me-not blue, which she first spotted in a Fra Angelico fresco. The logo is a reworking of a 1907 drawing, by the illustrator Paul Iribe, of Jeanne Lanvin and her 10-year-old daughter, Marguerite, dressed for a ball. The new shoe boxes are shaped like antique library files and tied with black satin ribbon. It is not as though I've ever found it easy to resist the clothing in the Lanvin store on Rue Faubourg Saint- Honoré in Paris, but from now on it will be impossible.
Don't get me wrong. No packaging, not even Lanvin's, can ever matter more than its contents. But great packaging makes shopping more fun, and, as Tiffany has proved, occasionally elicits cash from impressionable people like me. And judging by eBay's thriving online trade in empty Hermès boxes, it can even be an investment.
