The Pride of the Harness Maker — Hermès and the Philosophy of an Empire in No Hurry

Passing a thread by hand, one stitch at a time, through the leather straps that go around a horse’s neck. The story of how the name Hermès became a brand ranked among the world’s heights began with this humble, painstaking work. If the Louis Vuitton we visited last time succeeded by riding the change of an age called travel, then Hermès is rather the story of a family that survived, on the strength of its hand skills alone, even as the times nearly destroyed it. In the twentieth century, when carriages vanished and automobiles began to run, a workshop sewing harnesses ought, by rights, to have ended its role. And yet, by holding fast to a stance that at first glance seems stubborn — never hurrying, never going cheap, simply making good things by hand — Hermès instead transcended the times. Let us trace that paradoxical history.

A Workshop That Began with Harnesses

The beginning of Hermès is said to date to 1837, the harness workshop that Thierry Hermès opened in Paris. In the Europe of that time, the carriage was the protagonist that carried people and cargo, and harness making was an indispensable craft. Thierry gained a reputation for his skill in making harnesses that did not hurt a horse’s body and yet endured for a long time. Best known among them is the hand-stitching technique that uses two needles to sew leather together. Even if one thread frays, the other holds the seam, so it does not come undone easily — this sturdy method of stitching became the backbone of craftsmanship indispensable to any account of the Hermès that followed.

When the second generation, Charles-Émile, took over, the workshop expanded further. Around 1880 the shop is said to have moved to 24 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris, a location still known today as the Hermès flagship. In time, Hermès harnesses came to be favored by the royalty and nobility of Europe, and by one account even became purveyors to the Russian Tsar, securing their renown as makers of the finest harnesses.

Yet from the end of the nineteenth century into the start of the twentieth, a great trial came upon this family. A new vehicle called the automobile appeared, and carriages began to vanish from the streets. For a workshop that sewed harnesses, this was a change like the very pillars of the structure crumbling away.

The Pivot That Avoided Ruin

The path Hermès took here was neither to resist the change of the times nor to switch in a panic to some other trade. The third generation, Émile-Maurice, chose to pour the leather and stitching skills honed in harness making into things other than the horse. Not saddles and harnesses, but the bags people carry and the clothing they wear. He quietly shifted the craft of making tools for the horse into the craft of making tools for human life.

The symbol of this was the zipper, which Émile-Maurice is said to have been among the first in France to adopt. By one account, he took note of this new fastener he had seen abroad and applied it to leather goods and clothing, and people are said to have called it ‘the Hermès fastener.’ The harness maker transformed into a comprehensive luxury workshop dealing in travel trunks, handbags, and apparel — and this pivot was the very reason Hermès did not perish at the end of the age of the carriage.

In 1937, Hermès released its first silk scarf, the Carré. Drawn on a thin square of silk with intricate designs of horses, carriages, and tackle, this scarf was cherished as a small work of art that let one wear the history and aesthetic of harness making itself. It offered even those who could not reach a bag an entrance to the world of Hermès — the scarf became a bridge by which a craftsman’s workshop broadened into a brand.

Kelly and Birkin — The Bags That Earned a Name

What pushed Hermès up into a global symbol is the story surrounding two bags. One was a trapezoidal handbag, originally made under a different name. In 1956, when a photograph became widely known of the actress Grace Kelly, by then Princess of Monaco, holding this bag before her body in front of the press, people came to call this bag by the princess’s name. In time Hermès is said to have officially named it the Kelly, and a single bag, bound up with one woman’s elegance, took on a special meaning.

The other story is said to have been born in 1984. The anecdote goes that aboard a plane bound from Paris to London, the British actress Jane Birkin, after her belongings spilled from her wicker tote, exchanged words with Jean-Louis Dumas, the head of Hermès who happened to be seated beside her. From that conversation about the ideal bag came the concept of a bag combining capacity with refinement, and the Birkin, bearing her name, is said to have been made. Both anecdotes are said to have had their details swell as they were passed down, yet it is certain that a story binding a celebrity to a bag added an irreplaceable value to the product.

Beginning as a workshop sewing harnesses, surviving the age of the automobile, and rising through bags and scarves to rank among the world’s heights, the journey of Hermès teaches us that never hurrying, never going cheap, and keeping faith with the hand’s craft can, at times, become the strongest strategy of all. Yet while artisans in this Paris atelier passed thread one stitch at a time, in the same city a figure had appeared who would shake the conventions of luxury from an entirely different angle. A single woman who sought to free not bags or harnesses, but the very clothing women wore, from its cramped constraints — next time, we visit the story of that revolution.