Hermès
The harness maker whose pursuit of the perfect stitch became the measure of modern luxury.
Few houses have traveled as far from their origins as Hermès, and fewer still have kept faith with them so completely. The workshop that Thierry Hermès opened in 1837 to make harnesses for the carriage horses of Paris became, across six generations of a single family, the most exacting name in luxury, and its jewelry carries the very same devotion to craft.
The Harness Maker of Paris
Thierry Hermès was born in 1801 in Krefeld, then a French-held city in the Rhineland, and learned the saddler's trade in Normandy. In 1837 he opened a workshop near the Madeleine in Paris and set out to make the finest harnesses in the city, bound by the hand-worked saddle stitch that remains the house's signature to this day. His craft won medals at the great Universal Expositions and clients as grand as Napoleon III.
His son Charles-Émile moved the house in 1880 to 24 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, still its home, and added saddlery and a proper shop. As the automobile began to replace the carriage, Charles-Émile's son Émile-Maurice turned the family's leatherwork toward bags, luggage, and travel, even securing the French rights to the zipper. The silk scarf followed in 1937. Hermès became a house of many crafts without ever letting go of the first.
Luxury is what can be repaired.Jean-Louis Dumas
Why Their Jewelry Matters
Hermès came to jewelry as it came to everything, through the horse. Its first piece, the Filet de selle of 1927, set a miniature snaffle bit on a leather strap, and the harness, the stirrup, the buckle, and above all the chain would supply the house's jewelry vocabulary ever after. This is jewelry of form, sculptural and useful in spirit, closer to the saddler's bench than the jeweler's.
The defining design arrived in 1938, when Robert Dumas, walking the Normandy coast, watched the anchor chains holding the boats and drew from them the Chaîne d'Ancre. Rendered first in silver, its rounded anchor links have been made without pause for nearly ninety years, in silver and gold, as bracelets, necklaces, and rings. The Collier de Chien, the studded dog collar reborn as jewelry, followed in 1949.
In 1976 the house translated its celebrated scarf prints into wide enamel bangles banded with gilt, and these, with the later Clic Clac H, became some of the most collected accessories in fashion. Whether silver, gold, or enamel, a Hermès piece is made to be kept, mended, and handed on. That is precisely what makes the vintage examples so prized.
The House Today
Hermès remains what almost no luxury house still is, a family company. Six generations of Thierry's descendants, across the Dumas, Guerrand, and Puech branches, have guided it, and in 2010 and 2011 they closed ranks to fend off a takeover attempt by a far larger rival, pooling their shares into a single holding to keep the house their own. Since 2013 it has been led by Axel Dumas, of the sixth generation, with Pierre-Alexis Dumas as artistic director.
It still makes its leather by hand at 24 Faubourg Saint-Honoré, and still counts the horse as its first client. In an age built on scale, Hermès has made its fortune on the opposite, on slowness, on repair, and on the patience of the hand. The same logic runs through its jewelry, which is why a Hermès chain or bangle outlasts the season it was bought in.
Hermès at MDVII
At MDVII we look for the Hermès pieces that carry the house's craft in miniature, the chains and bangles and silver that reward a lifetime of wear. The Hermès pieces available now are gathered below.
