Hermès
The Paris house that has never stopped being a saddler. Thierry Hermès opened a harness workshop near the Madeleine in 1837; his grandson put a zip in a leather jacket for the Prince of Wales, then handbags in the window; the first silk carré was printed in 1937; a photograph of Grace Kelly renamed a bag in 1977 and a spilled straw basket on a Paris–London flight named another in 1984. This is the archive of all of it — the runway from Martin Margiela to Nadège Vanhée, the leather and silk ateliers, the Saut Hermès under the glass of the Grand Palais, the windows, the watches and the perfumes, the family that fought off LVMH, and the period advertisements from the years when the house still sold saddles first.
A chronological documentary of 1,180 moments on Loreline.
last updated 2026-07-30
Eras
- The Saddlers' House — The house before it was a global brand. Almost nothing survives on film from the saddlery years, so this facet holds genuine period artifacts only — the two founders, the trade advertisements Hermès ran when its own copy still called it a saddler, and the earliest moving footage of the Faubourg shopfront. It is deliberately short: the alternative would be filling it with modern films about the past.
- Les Sacs — The bags: the Sac à dépêches that became the Kelly, the holdall built for Jane Birkin, the Constance, the Bolide, the Haut à courroies. The objects themselves, the stories that named them, and the auction rooms where they now set records.
- Le Carré — The silk square. Ninety centimetres of twill, engraved and printed in Lyon, hand-rolled at the hem, first issued in 1937 and reissued in new designs every season since — and everything people have done with it besides tie it around their necks.
- The Runway — Hermès on the catwalk: the in-house studio of the late eighties and nineties, Martin Margiela's quiet tenure, Jean Paul Gaultier's, Christophe Lemaire's, Nadège Vanhée's — and Véronique Nichanian, who ran menswear from 1988 until 2026.
- Windows & Art — The house as a patron and a stage set: Leïla Menchari's Faubourg windows, the Fondation d'entreprise Hermès and its galleries, the exhibitions, the artist collaborations, and the campaign films — which Hermès makes as short films rather than advertisements.
- Watches & Objects — Everything that is not leather or silk. La Montre Hermès at Biel and the Arceau, Cape Cod and H08 watches; the perfumes from Eau d'Hermès to the Jardins; the porcelain, the crystal, the ties, and the cars, cameras and objects other people bring to the Faubourg to be re-made.
- Savoir-faire — How the things are actually made. The leather ateliers and the saddle stitch, the silk engravers and printers of Lyon, the watchmakers at Biel, the École Hermès des savoir-faire, and the short films the house makes about single gestures — cutting, sewing, polishing, beading.
- Equestrian — The first customer was a horse. Saddlery and harness-making, the riders the house equips, and the Saut Hermès — the five-star show-jumping competition Hermès has staged under the glass roof of the Grand Palais since 2010.
- The House — 24 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré and the family that has held it since 1880: six generations of Hermès and Dumas, the 1993 flotation, the LVMH stake battle of 2010–2014 and the H51 holding that ended it, and the stores the house opens very slowly and keeps for a very long time.
…and 1,180 more moments. Full text archive: /loreline-text/hermes.md
