An ABC Of Hermès Crafts

For the better part of the last two centuries, the name Hermès has been synonymous with the world’s highest quality luxury goods--from the Paris company’s original saddlery items of the 1800s to its famous silk scarves of the 1930s, to today’s celebrity-endorsed Birkin bags. At present, the company operates workshops specializing in 16 distinct crafts--each employing experts of the highest order, from saddlers to tailors, perfumers, jewelers, hatmakers, cobblers, watchmakers and designers of printed silk or home decor. Within each craft, specific skills are broken into meticulously precise gestures, measurements and actions known by name only to the insiders. In this volume, authored by Olivier Saillard, director of the Galliera Museum of fashion in Paris, Hermès for the first time in its history reveals 100 “previously unspoken” terms essential to its handcrafted ethos. With wit and poetry, Saillard explicates these terms, providing a glimpse into “a territory dedicated to the hands, its range and variety of activity often unsuspected, a never ending ballet of agile fingers steadily handling tools over tamed materials.”}