A Day in the Life of Hermès’s Leather Goods Creative Director

[calm classical piano music]

Hi Vogue. My name is Priscila Alexandre Spring.

I'm the leather goods creative director at Hermes.

We're in Pantin near Paris and you'll be spending the day

with me today, so let's go.

We have a very strong heritage

and a really beautiful history.

I hope that when you buy a bag from Hermes,

it's love at first sight, but also something

that you know you're gonna hold for a long time.

[calm classical piano music]

[Priscila speaking in French]

So this is our studio, a really good studio

where the team works and we're very excited to share

with you 'cause it's the first time we open our door.

I'll take you to my office.

[calm classical piano music]

I grew up in this environment of like with my family,

always working with their hands,

and myself, I've always loved to draw

and that was really what my passion was as a child.

And I spent hours and hours and hours sketching.

My grandma was an embroider and she always taught me

how the most beautifully and embroidery is the reverse,

as it should be as beautiful as the outside.

And my dad was a self-taught creative,

so I always watch him doing a lot of painting, sculpture.

Usually I do like little sketches just to explain

more or less what the idea is,

when then it's gonna be a discussion with the maquettiste

and we going to try to make 'em 3D maquette.

Then if we like it, we'll move on to leather.

Pri. [Priscila speaking French]

Do you have five seconds? Of course.

So it's gonna be right on time for the show.

[Louise] Yeah. Perfect.

[Louise] And then they took several ones.

Okay, cool. They did it in Salpa, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[calm classical piano music]

To explain this is the salpa.

It's a material, like a fabric

that we use that simulates leather

because it really behaves like leather.

The good thing is that we can make several mockups,

as you can see, and we can play with it

before actually using the real leather

and really helps us to visualize

how things are gonna look in the end, as you can see.

[Louise] Thank you. Thank you.

[Henda] See you later. Hi.

[Priscila] How are you?

[Henda] Good. You? Good?

How's it going?

Was working, as we talked about before on Hermes backpack.

The idea is to bring a new gesturality,

something a little bit more contemporary,

but still with the very recognizable codes of Hermes.

There's different ways to approach novelty

in our collections. You know, we have a very strong heritage

and a really beautiful history, which is very inspiring.

But we also like to bring new ideas to the table

that are based on our classics,

like the Kelly, the Birkin, or the [indistinct].

We have these old equestrian catalogs,

either by the shape, a strap, a form, it's endless.

The way we can be inspired by these old catalogs.

It's enormous, lift, slow as well.

[calm classical piano music]

Bonjour. Ca va. Bonjour.

Salut. Salut.

Hello, Christine. Ca va.

[Priscila and Christine speaking French]

This is Christine. She coordinates and manages

all the artisans you'll see

in this [Priscila says French word].

And basically she's the head of development

and she makes sure that all the bags that leave Hermes,

they have to be validated by Christine.

[Priscila and Christine speaking French]

40 years. She knows everything. She is the queen.

[Christine laughing]

That's how we call her Queen Christine.

[Priscila and Christine speaking French]

Hello.

[Priscila and Aurelie speaking French]

So I'm going to explain you, basically we have this new bag

with a little closure that is,

it looks like it's just hanging there.

And actually what we are doing is that we have,

this is the same piece and basically,

there's like little holes and Aurelie is gonna stitch

everything by hand. [calm classical piano music]

So that we can then close our bag.

This bag was designed and we did it in the studio

for like maybe three months,

and now with the bureau Deit,

maybe we'll gonna take like about six to nine months

to put it [Priscila says French word].

Okay. So now we're going to see Stephane.

He's working with Alexandre that is from the,

[Priscila says French word],

which means the hardware workshop, and they're trying

to get the metal and the leather working together,

the magic of this office. Hello.

[Stephane] Hello.

Salut. Salut, ça va. Hello.

[Priscila, Stephane, Alexandre speaking French]

So this bag is inspired by a gigantic horse bed.

The idea is to hide the whole metal part with the leather.

We polish all our hardware by hand and we use brass.

We love noise at Hermes, the noise that the metal does

and the noise that a closure has.

So this is little details that we pay a lot of attention

as well that most people don't know,

and we do spend a little time on just hearing the noise

and see if we like the noise.

Salut Karine. Bonjour.

Bonjour ça va. So this is the front of a Kelly

because we like the client not to feel anything in the back,

when you touch your back inside.

We make a little hole where we will put this little closure.

Our artisans, they need to do four years of training

to be able to manufacture a Kelly bag.

This that you've just seen the perlage,

you need to be very skilled and very, very good

because if you miss one single second to the side,

you have to redo everything again. So.

[Priscila speaking French]

Bonjour Fabrice. Bonjour.

Ca va. Fabrice is doing the last stitching on a Kelly bag.

A Kelly takes around 13 hours to be made

depending on the materials that we make it.

I like the Kelly because it's an archetype.

It was made in the thirties and it was always in the shelf

until Grace Kelly one day covered their pregnant belly

from paparazzi, and then that was it.

The rest is the history that Kelly became the Kelly.

So as you could see that we build a Kelly

[indistinct] made inside out.

It requires a lot of skill to turn it

and get it on the right way. [calm classical piano music]

This is our stock of leathers

that we usually use to do our mockups.

We have about 200 colors always in collection,

and about 50 materials, including different leathers,

as you can see. Craftsmanship is really at the core

of the museum before anything.

It's work of women and men that they do by hand.

It's been transmitted for many generations now.

So we do have our specific [Priscila speaks French],

the way we stitch, the way we assemble,

the way we think about bags at Hermes addresses longevity

from the very beginning. We think straight away.

How we going to repair this?

How someone in maybe 30 years will repair this.

So I think this addresses sustainability

in a very different way because also, and the ultimate goal

with our bags is that they last as long time as possible.

[calm classical piano music]

Let me introduce you to Marc.

Marc has been working at Hermes for 25 years

and he is just doing a Berkin picnic,

and he's gonna show us how he is doing the little lace,

so as to assemble the bag, the leather and the wicker.

Everything is a little hand massage.

[calm classical piano music]

It takes about eight hours

to do the lacing all around the bag.

As you can see, Marc already started inside.

And 19 hours to do the whole bag.

[calm classical piano music]

Okay, Vogue. I hope you spend a good day today

with us here at Hermes. I hope you learned a lot about

how we do things and it's nighttime, so time to go home.

See you soon.

[calm classical piano music]