A top fashion brand may not have had much to do with fashion at the beginning of its existence – such is the case with Hermes.
The Hermès logo was inspired by a painting by Alfred de Dreux entitled “Carriage and Child” in the collection of Mile Maurice Hermès, the third generation of Hermès.
The painting shows a two-seater four-wheeled carriage, driven by the owner himself, but with the owner’s seat in vain. So the meaning of the Hermès logo is: Hermès provides first-class goods, but how to show the characteristics of the goods needs to be understood and driven by the person who owns it!
The brand is famous for its high quality harnesses in Paris, and has since diversified into bags, clothing, scarves, perfumes, enameling, accessories and home furnishings.
Hermes has its head office in Paris, France, and branches all over the world. After more than 160 years, the Hermes family has made a name for itself over the generations. As early as the dawn of the 20th century, Hermes has become the quintessential representative of French luxury consumer goods. Hermès has always been characterized by a tradition of excellence and splendor in design, and has always been a model of elegance.
The history of Hermes goes back 180 years.
Craftsmanship honed on the battlefield
When it comes to the story of Hermes, it goes back to the early 19th century. At that time, Napoleon’s army had a very famous French breastplate cavalry regiment.
In order to be able to put the soldiers into battle more without distraction, Napoleon found for this regiment several smiths who sewed and made harnesses.
In 1485, King Richard III was engaged in a duel with Earl Henry. Because he was in such a hurry to get to the battlefield, the blacksmith did not have time to fix the missing nail in the horse’s palm for the King.
Because of this small iron nail, the King of England had the misfortune of tumbling out of his saddle on the battlefield. The leader fell off his horse, the army was in great disarray, and the country was given away.
King Richard III, the unlucky egg is his “because of the horse’s palm to lose the kingdom” under the previous experience, Napoleon asked his own craftsmen in the production of horse harness, must be meticulous. In this kind of high standards and strict requirements of the training, the army craftsmen to produce the craft of horse harness is also more and more refined.
However, as Napoleon was defeated and exiled to St. Helena, his cavalry regiment became increasingly disorganized.
By 1837, one of the former army craftsmen returned to Paris and opened a small store specializing in yokes, reins, halters, and other harnesses with relatives at 56 rue Basse-du-Rempart.
The craftsman’s name was Thierry Hermes, and he was one of the men who started the Hermes empire.
Popular for “safety”.
He also opened the door for French men to “love of beauty”, and owning a set of top quality harnesses became the most honorable thing for a man of that era.
As big as a rivet, as small as a stitch, Thierry brings the standards of the battlefield to the store, not allowing a single error on his work, and it is the attitude of excellence that gives his products the explosive power to follow!
A small saddle can easily take months to make. No matter what your status, it’s not negotiable. That’s why his tack store didn’t do well when he first opened.
One day in 1842, Ferdinand, the brother of Louis-Philippe, then King of France, was traveling in a carriage. On the way, because the horse’s palm was not firm, the horse was frightened and overturned the carriage, and Ferdinand was also killed as a result.
However, it is because of this incident that we are reminded of Hermes, which is famous for its safety, for example, the harnesses made by Thierry Hermes are made of raw cowhide from the Piedmont region in northern Italy. Because of the climate, the hides are both soft and intact.
Moreover, when sewing the saddle, he used the “saddle double stitch”, the advantage of this stitch is that even if the saddle is open somewhere, it will not collapse all at once and frighten the horse.
And so the word spread and Thierry Hermes began to open up his market in Paris. Hermes is certainly not a one-generation deal.
Three Generations of “Madness”
By the time 1870 rolled around, Thierry Hermes had essentially left the harness store in the hands of his son, Charles-Emile Hermes.
It was in 1878 that Charles-Emile moved his store directly into a small two-story building at 24 Rue Faubourg, next door to the royal gardens of Napoleon III. The street was frequented daily by prestigious families, all of whom were their potential target customers or were already customers.
At that time, France and Russia had just stopped and signed a peace agreement, Emile Maurice risked not being able to come back and ran straight to the Czar’s house to sell his products. As a result, he not only returned safely to France, but also got a hat back from the Tsar, and brought a large amount of orders along with him. But no matter how many orders he received, Emile Maurice always remembered his grandfather’s love for carriages and harnesses, and did not compromise on his craftsmanship.
If Thierry Hermes was the beginning of the Hermes miracle, then Emile Maurice was the turning point of this miracle.At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the automobile gradually began to horse-drawn carriages in France.
It was then that Emile Maurice realized that if he continued to make harnesses as he was doing now, it wouldn’t be long before his brand was history.
So, in 1897, Hermes designed a leather bag for men to carry saddles, and it was the first real Hermes handbag.
Twenty-five years later, the first Hermès bag for women was born. The reason for the appearance of this bag is very simple, just because Emile Maurice’s wife said: the whole of Paris does not have people like the bag.
Since then, leather handbags have slowly become the brand’s most popular product. But despite this, he has not forgotten that harnesses are the starting point of the Hermès family. To keep the equestrian element in the blood of Hermès, he designed a painting from his collection called “The Quadriga and the Horse Boy” as the brand’s logo, which is still in use today.
