Birkin bags retail for about $9,000 and can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars auctionare not expensive, said Pierre-Alexis Dumas, artistic director of Hermès.

Instead, he uses the word “expensive” to describe the coveted handbags – and he sees a difference between expensive and expensive purchases.

Cost is the price of properly making a high-quality luxury bag, even if customers have to wait years for the chance to own one. Expensive properties, on the other hand, do not meet the customers’ wishes. The difference between the two is that customers need to be patient, says Dumas.

“We’re about craftsmanship, we’re not machines,” he said. “And we don’t compromise on the quality of the way we make the bags.”

The challenge of getting a Birkin bag

The surreal twist on Hermès’ exclusivity is that even customers who can afford a bag find it difficult to purchase a bag. Stores typically don’t have any for sale and the Birkin is not available on the Hermès website.

“It’s a long process,” Dumas said. “You go into a store, get an appointment, meet a salesperson, talk about what you want. It is not available. You have to wait. They will get back to you. It takes a long time. At some point.”, it will happen.

Branch managers act as gatekeepers. There are stories of years of waiting lists for bags and waiting lists to get on the waiting list. Wall Street is also rumored to be brilliantly tricking its customers by artificially creating scarcity.

Dumas said it was the kind of marketing idea that could only come from marketing-obsessed people, and Hermès didn’t have a marketing team, he said.

“Whatever we have, we put it on the shelf and it goes,” he said.

Handcrafted in a high-speed world

Hermès does not have enough artisans to produce the bags, which have been made from start to finish by a single artisan for a century.

“I always like to say that Hermès is an old lady with startup problems because we grew so quickly in such a short period of time,” Dumas said. “How can you grow so quickly without changing what makes you strong?”

The company is dedicated to training people for lifelong careers at Hermès. By building its own pipeline of artisans, Hermès has managed to produce more of its coveted handbags than ever before, although the company does not want to disclose an exact number.

The company opened a leatherwork training center in 2021, where 400 graduates are trained annually in leatherwork, including the brand’s signature saddle stitching, which is designed to be robust and functional.

With a needle in each hand, the artisan draws a strong, beeswax-coated linen thread into precise loops. According to Hermès, the crossing of the needles that form the knot cannot be replicated by a machine and can take years to master.

The Kelly bag, the most difficult bag to make, starts with 30 different cuts of leather and can take 20 hours to complete – four hours just for the handle. There are no manuals or cheat sheets; The artisans rely on their training and muscle memory to create each bag.

Those who master the required skills typically gain employment in one of the 23 leather workshops that Hermès has set up in villages and towns across France.

One of them is in Tournes, a three-hour drive from Paris in the French countryside.

The workshop is quiet, without the noise of sewing machines. Inside, artisans perform a silent dance with dueling needles. Nobody in the workshop seems to be in a hurry. The pace seems leisurely, with no looming clocks or quotas – just the slow pursuit of perfection. The finished bags are “signed” by the artisans. The hidden mark of the artisan is the way Hermès bags are authenticated.

Dumas said it takes time to create something timeless.

“Speed ​​is the structuring value of the 20th century,” he said. “We went from horse-drawn carriages to the internet. Will we become so obsessed with speed and instant gratification? Maybe not? Maybe there’s another way of relating to the world that involves patience, taking the time to do things.” Right. You can’t compress time to one point without compromising quality.

A tradition of quality supported by chance

These aren’t just bags carefully crafted in an Ice Age location. Hermès silk scarves are screened and sewn by hand. Some designs take two years to work on.

The craft and culture behind the brand have been preserved by one family for almost 200 years. The House of Hermès was built on saddles, not silk. In 1837, Thierry Hermès began selling customized harnesses in Paris. That led to luggage and eventually handbags. More than a century later, Hermès is a luxury brand with sales of more than $200 billion and a catalog that includes everything from ready-to-wear to jewelry and furniture to a $272,000 pool table.

Dumas is the sixth generation of the family to take over the management. His father and grandfather worked at 24 Faubourg in Paris, the flagship store of Hermès, for more than a century. As a boy, he learned saddle stitching – the trademark of Hermès bags – in the Faubourg workshop. Saddles are still being built in the workshop today.

The appeal of Hermès, Dumas said, comes from a century of superb craftsmanship and serendipity.

An accidental success is the brand’s Kelly bag, designed by Dumas’ grandfather in 1935. It wasn’t a hit, but legend has it that 20 years later, a pregnant Grace Kelly used the bag to hide her belly from paparazzi. Women soon flocked to Hermès and asked about the bag.

The company’s scarves have been popular with royalty and celebrities for decades, offering product placement that money can’t buy.

Even the brand’s famous boxes, with their citrus-like color, which the company trademarked in the US, were a happy accident of the 1940s. It was 1946 and there were still World War II shortages. The paper and manufacturing box supplier ran out of beige paper that they used regularly.

“And he said, ‘I only have the supply of this orange roll of paper that no one wants,” Dumas said.

This color eventually became an important part of the brand identity.

It was also a coincidence that led to the piece of resistance at Hermès, the Birkin. The bag was designed by Dumas’ father in 1984 after he sat next to the British actress Jane Birkin on a flight to London.

“She said to him, ‘Well, I’m telling you, I’m not happy with my bag. I want something looser with bigger handles and lightness and always open when I wear them,'” Dumas said. “And while she was talking, my father could draw very well.”

Dumas’ father showed Birkin the sketch and that was it.