For those of you who have or those of you who want, there is a fantastic short article about the artisans behind Hermes in Vanity Fair. With the cost label of a Birkin starting around $7,000 now, numerous people may question why the big cost tag. The artisans carefully work on each Birkin, costs between 18 to 25 hours producing it. The Paris workrooms create only five Birkins per week, which then are supplied world wide. It now makes sense why the wait listings are so long. Yet high-end costs continue to go with the roof. people seem to have no problem costs over $1000 on a handbag, which two years back seemed steep. A $2500 bag is the new $1000 bag. When will it end?
Almost two centuries ago, a royal coronation may be delayed up until the arrival of its exquisitely stitched Hermès carriage fittings, just as today even the richest women should wait on an exquisitely stitched Hermès Birkin bag. With the family-run French business passing to a sixth generation, the author chronicles its increase to worldwide pre-eminence, where a contemporary aesthetic satisfies the humble tools””awls, mallets, needles, knives, as well as stones””of unsurpassed tradition.
For 28 years, from 1978 to 2006, the most quotable voice in retail””pragmatic, poetic””came from Jean-Louis Dumas, the head of a business that in every other method speaks with its hands. It is an old business with a Protestant spine as well as a Parisian perfectionism, one of the oldest family-owned-and-controlled business in France. Its name alone prompts sighs of wish among those in the know, as well as those in the understand run the gamut from French housewife to fashionista to queen (both kinds), from social climber to Olympic equestrian to C.E.O. The name itself is a sigh, a flight, as well as its appropriate pronunciation should frequently be taught. “Air-mez”””as in the messenger god with winged sandals. Mischievous, witty, ingenious Hermès.
“We don’t have a policy of image, we have a policy of product.”
Read the entire short article at Vanity fair {link}