What makes Hermes stand out in the fashion world?

If there is any symbolic gesture that can show the obsession of 200 years, it must be the dance of saddle needle-an experienced craftsman. At this time, her eyes were fixed on two small pieces of leather cut according to certain specifications. She holds a 5 cm long needle in one hand and linen fiber soaked in beeswax in the other. Then, like holding a surgical instrument, the craftsman waved the needle in his hand and penetrated the leather, then tightened the suture and tied a fast knot. These leathers may become part of many Hermè s products-depending on which studio 16 owned by Hermè s works. But no matter what the final product is, the movements in her hands are still full of impact, just like a symphony. This technology has never changed in the past two hundred years: Thierry Hermès, a leather craftsman, first came to Paris from Germany and founded the company in 1837. Since then, he has been using such a set of stitches when making harness for celebrities by hand.

A necessary tool for making saddles. Time has passed, and the Hermes family still sticks to its roots.

Hermes handbags and other products have no obvious brand identity. A few accessories will have the word "H", but most people in the company have some resistance to revealing the brand Logo. The real Logo should be a craftsman, who left his mark on the product from beginning to end. In Europe, there are also some other luxury brands that keep some workshops and craftsmen. In some small workshops with a long history, there are even seamstresses in white overalls to show their historical background. But no multinational company sticks to its tradition as stubbornly as Hermes. With the rise of private enterprises, the whole world is becoming more and more mechanized, and fashion is no exception. However, Hermes has been waiting for the end of these superficial and fleeting trends with a rebellious attitude.

The birth of the car should have led to the closure of Hermes. After all, this company first existed because of horses, and its earliest business was to make all kinds of horse equipment. However, by 1920, Hermes found that no matter how the mode of transportation changed, the taste of customers did not change. Just a few decades after Hautà Courroies handbags came out, the company began to make handbags suitable for sports car trunks. Later, Hermes designed a golf coat with an invention called "zipper", which was unknown at that time and entered the fashion world.

But the Hermè s family still sticks to its roots: they will use the stirrup outline as the shape of perfume bottles, or buckle their coats in the shape of a bit. In this way, people can recognize it at a glance. In the 20th century, this company successively introduced various products such as men's wear, women's wear, silk scarves, shoes, porcelain, jewelry and perfume. By 2 1 century, it has developed into an international enterprise with annual sales of $44 billion. But even so, the Hermes family still insists on its own handicraft tradition. They think that once they start to relax and accept those shiny new things, their strength will disappear.

Images related to horses still appear in many product designs. The picture shows the recent design sketch of Pierre Hardy, the designer of Hermes shoes.

Although family business can keep the brand running smoothly, Hermes, which originated from manual workshops, has a unique decentralized management model. There is no so-called "head" in this modern enterprise, but a guild structure: the company has independent workshops and corresponding supervisors, who are responsible for producing women's wear, perfume, shoes, jewelry, men's wear, silk products and household items. France's high fashion tradition helps to maintain the core position of handmade. People once called this organizational structure "corps demé tier", that is, a semi-autonomous and highly specialized workshop network. The craftsmen in the workshop are trained from the beginning of apprenticeship to produce a single kind of products.

In fact, the difference between Hermes and other brands is mostly due to its incompatibility with the times-Hermes has more than 1.34 million employees, including 4,000 craftsmen (this ratio is rare in any other international luxury brand). After a year's training in the internal school, craftsmen will practice for one or two years under the supervision of their tutors, and then formally start working. They have three possible working points: the eighth block of Paris; Panding workshop, located in the suburb of Paris, has a history of 27 years; Or small workshops all over France. Even in the headquarters of Fu Bao Avenue, the workshops are scattered. When you walk along a corridor, you will surely see craftsmen behind the glass door busy making patterns or piecing together exquisite patterns on the sewing machine.

Mike perelman and Fabry are in Pantin's workshop. "Hermes has a tradition of paying attention to practicality. But it is also a decorative brand. This contradiction is very interesting. Technology is cold, but Hermes has temperature. Fabry said. Macaux Perelman said, "What is our dream? Is to be able to create products that become Hermes symbols like Birkin. 」

In this fashion world from show to wardrobe, Hermes still keeps a restrained contempt for flashy things and stubbornly insists on expensive pricing. Looking back, we found that this idea of going against the trend was actually prescient: some companies launched too many entry-level products in order to win the favor of young customers. It is too late to find that the core inheritance of the brand will easily die out. Charlotte Mike perelman is an architect. In 20 14, she joined Hermes with Alexis Fabry, the curator and publisher, and began to manage Hermes House. They are all in charge of the furniture and household goods workshop.

In the Hermè s building in Rue Boissy d'Anglas, Boisis, a script wall is covered with sketches of home design.

Scarf is probably the most iconic symbol of Hermes, which appears in 1937, and Hermes calls it "carrés". In the past 16 years, Bali Barrett has been in charge of Hermes' silk scarf workshop. The process of making silk scarves is also mysterious, just like creating a handwritten manuscript, rather than making decorations around the neck. A silk product of Hermes may take two years to complete, and the same process may take only a few weeks in other companies.

Every year, Hermes' silk scarf workshop introduces 20 new designs (spring/summer and autumn/winter series 10). External artists and illustrators will submit hundreds of sketches for these 20 designs. As a manager, Barret will attract artists from all over the world and even look for new design talents all over the world. Like other studio colleagues, she will also create detailed files. One of her magic weapons is thousands of hand-bound collections of old designs. By studying these, we can avoid repeating ideas and stimulate new ones.

Barret used to have his own fashion brand. In 2003, Pierre-Alexis Dumas, the artistic director of Hermes, hired her to manage the silk scarf studio. In 2009, she was appointed as the artistic director of Hermes Women's World by the company, managing all women's products, including clothing, accessories, shoes, jewelry and perfume. "Silk scarf design is sometimes like science and sometimes like art," Barret said. "You should try to solve those complicated problems, they will involve hundreds of aspects, and all the problems exist at the same time. 」

The silk scarf workshop is located in Lyon, southeast of Paris, which can be reached by high-speed train for two hours. There is a color workshop in the studio with 25 employees. The inks used for scarves in this season are all prepared by hand here (each design has 8 to 12 colors). Barret prefers to use Hermes' own color scheme with more than 75,000 records. Most Tuesdays, the Lyon team will go to Paris to show samples. Barret will stand in front of a huge whiteboard with rows of scarves fixed by magnets. Then, she will give her opinion on these scarves. The meeting can last up to 9 hours, and then on the next Tuesday, the team will show Barret the revised new design, seek her feedback, and then repeat the work on the next Tuesday until the result is satisfactory to everyone.

"The upcoming? Modification of L'Ombre des Pivoines (under peony flowers) silk scarf sample

The above is just the work before the silk scarf is made. A silk scarf may use as many as 45 typesetting, and each color on it will be pressed onto thick silk, which is made of 300 raw cocoons in Pantin Hermes' workshop. "Making silk scarves is the purest," Barrett said. "The finished product you get is like a painting. It's perfect. 」

Pierre Hardy worked as a shoe designer at Hermes for nearly 30 years, and also served as the creative director of jewelry. He likes both straightforward design and interesting style. So this year, people will see the hollowed-out patterns of clouds and satellite-style heels on the suede platform shoes. Véronique Nichanian, who has been a menswear designer since 1988, added a dragon pulling a carriage to the autumn collection. Christine Nagel took over from Jean-Claude Ellena, a legend in perfume industry, in 20 16, and became the royal perfumer of Hermes. She chose to express the theme in an abstract way and launched a floral perfume that "mixed the sweetness of white musk and the taste of daydreaming".

Hardy was once a learned dancer and illustrator. Started as a shoe designer for Hermes from 1990, and began to participate in jewelry design from 200 1. He has two working places, one is the studio in Paris-all the products he designed for the brand of the same name in the past 20 years came from there; The other is Hermes' shoe store in Panting. "There are no rules or golden rules here," Hardy said. "The model here works because it has a great team, just like an orchestra. Everyone gets nervous. 」

It is said that this is the strictest management of creative work within Hermes. Pierre-Alexis Dumas himself is very tall and agile. He used to study visual arts at Brown University. He often thinks about what Hermes should do in this fast-paced world: if it continues to maintain its "outdated" style, it will face some challenges. No similar company adopts this vertical integration model, which controls most raw materials and the whole process of many single items from conception to completion. Since 200 1, Hermes' online trade has developed very strongly, but its process of adapting to social media is not very smooth. But Pierre-Alexis Dumas believes that the digital world "creates an illusion that everything is getting closer, but in fact, the important things are drifting away from people".

Nichanian has been a designer of Hermes menswear since 1988. "Men wearing Hermes know what beauty is," she said. "They know what is really good and don't need others to tell them. Therefore, every single item should have its own meaning, and they want to express a complete story, not a certain part of the modeling. Every product has life. I hope they can last forever. Right: Leather used in spring collection.

In the past ten years, there has been an anti-mechanization cultural trend of thought around the world, and many people have begun to admire handicraft skills, which will naturally benefit companies like Hermes. But at the same time, they still have to face the pressure to attract the attention of the younger generation. Pierre-Alexis Dumas's goal is to express the company's contemporary picky and picky. Therefore, Hermes has recently invested a lot of time and money in holding activities around the world to show the technology of making products in various unexpected places. You can bring your mother's silk scarf to the event site, and Hermes will dye the silk scarf with a futuristic professional machine to create a psychedelic new color scheme. Petit h is a handicraft workshop founded in 20 10 by Pascale Mussard, a member of Hermes family. Hermes used it to express her interpretation of sustainability. The idea is grand and interesting: the studio collects the remaining leather waste, silk, extra buttons and some defective crystal glassware from the console, and then transforms them into unique items, such as teddy bears, Christmas decorations and handbags with strange styles and decorations.

After Jean-Claude Ellena, the respected originator of Hermes perfume, retired, Nagel took over as the company's royal perfumer. When asked where to choose as her studio, she chose Pantin, a penthouse room with a terrace. There, people can overlook the entire workshop complex, where Jean-Louis Dumas, the father of Pierre-Alexis Dumas, the current creative director, once worked. "I got the best gift: time," she said. "The company never sets a budget or deadline for me. I have never done a focus group interview. You are working for creation, and that is working for Hermes. Right: The picture above shows a row of perfumes designed by nagel, and the picture below is part of her inspiration.

Because Hermes still maintains the guild-style operation mode, the internal workflow is also carried out from the bottom up. Sometimes when Hermes lacks some professional skills inside, they will cooperate with external craftsmen. But these craftsmen are getting older and older, and their children are not interested in inheriting the craft. Some competitors of Hermes blindly pursue growth and even open up new categories to satisfy shareholders. But unlike them, Pierre-Alexis Dumas and his cousin Axel Dumas seem to be more inclined to close their doors and devote more energy to cultivating internal dispersed partners and continuing their handicraft skills.

"Here, your ideas will be in their proper place, and other places can't do this. People here don't say, "Oh, this won't work, the cost is too high." Hardy said. He used to be a learned dancer and illustrator. Hardy himself is very creative. Axel Dumas and Pierre-Alexis Dumas even allowed him to remain a freelancer in order to accommodate him. He still keeps his eponymous shoe brand in Paris, and he is also designing shoes for Nicolas Ghesquiè re (200 1 to 20 12). However, in his mind, Hermes has always been his home, always reminding him of the world of dance: "There is a sense of faith here, which makes me feel very comfortable. Just like family: they love you very much and allow you to make mistakes. 」

Vanhee-Cybulski joined Hermes on 20 14 as a women's designer. Her studio is located in Pantin, next to the "Leather Cellar" (a semi-secret temperature-controlled cellar where rolls of fur from foreign countries are stored). However, she spends a lot of time in factories in Italy and other parts of the world. "We don't talk about luxury goods of Hermes," she said. "We talk about intelligence. 」

In Hermes, shoes are as challenging for women as ready-made clothes (the latter is designed by Nadège Vanhee-Cybulski). Although most of Hermes' products can be worn or used for generations, shoes and clothes are always influenced by fashion trends. Especially women's shoes, no matter how hard they are, they should step on the street. "Their value may last for a quarter or two, and then customers will want new ones. Hardy said frankly.

"You still have to fully conceive the design of the product," he added. "You can't let the life of the product affect you. Hardy's latest attempt is to explore high-tech running shoes-this is also a sign that Hermes is trying to adapt to the times. Other brands of running shoes in the world are produced in Asian factories, even those that cost more than $500. However, Hermes has maximized the expansion of its workshop in Panding to meet the needs of producing running shoes. " They are completely different engineering technologies, just like making cars. Hardy said.

Coat prototype in women's manual workshop

Hermes always insists that the product is the first sample in Hermes workshop.

She knows that fashion is to eat youthful meals. This is its essence, or at least its way of development. Many times, due to time, people's talents can't be displayed; An endless stream of new products on the market, anxiety about profit, pressure to try to reduce costs and make a difference, all these factors torment designers and lead them to leave the industry eventually. However, Hermes chose an elegant rhythm that is not limited by time: it doesn't care what the current trend is, and prefers to stay out of it. Because of this, it has become a unique existence. In its own unfashionable world, products come first, they are created for eternity. This is also a culture that calmly resists instant gratification. Hardy loves meditation, is proficient in literature and often thinks about the nature of freedom. He sat on the long table in the shoe studio, fiddling with the strange elements he planned to add to the new collection-an iron heel modeled after a small sculpture by jean arp and a buckle the size of a square buckle. "As you get older, you will lose your freedom because your possibilities are limited," he said. "But you know, I feel freer now than 15 years ago. And this is simply impossible in other places. As we all know, here, when the product is finished, it is precisely because of the constant polishing of the craftsman's hand that it will be more beautiful than you originally expected. 」

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Written by Nancy Haas

Photography: Olivier Mecger

Hair and makeup: Huelan Van Duc&; Geraldine lemerre

Photographic Assistant: Martin Valle

Translation: There is translation thinking about Wang Di.

Arrangement: Antoine Young

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