Hermès

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English model, actress, and singer Jane Birkin holding her Birkin bag, made by Hermès, at a news conference in Tokyo, 2013.

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Hermès, French luxury goods company established by Thierry Hermès in 1837 and stewarded by subsequent generations. The company began as a purveyor of high-end horse tack, or equestrian equipment, but at the advent of the automobile age, it used its workers’ expertise in leatherworking to transition to the production of luggage, handbags, and other wares for wealthy people. Hermès has since become one of the most valuable luxury retailers in the world, with expanded offerings that include silk scarves, ready-to-wear clothing lines, and home decor. The brand is also notable for its commitment to artisanal production techniques, which often limit the supply of some of its most iconic items, notably its Birkin handbags.

Thierry Hermès, the son of an innkeeper, was born in 1801 in Krefeld, a German town that was then part of France. The widespread violence and disease spread by the Napoleonic Wars (c. 1800–15) left Hermès orphaned as a teenager, and, in search of a new start, he moved to Normandy in 1821 to learn the trade of sellier-harnacheur (“saddle and harness maker”). In subsequent years Hermès married and started a family, which he eventually moved to Paris. In the French capital he opened an equestrian supply business, selling harnesses, saddles, and other high-end horse tack on the rue Basse-du-Rempart.

Hermès went on to cultivate a reputation for producing high-quality leather and wrought-iron goods and soon became known for employing the highly durable “saddle stitch,” a technique still used on the company’s leather handbags. Fashionable members of the horse-riding set, including Empress Eugénie, the wife of Napoleon III, were loyal customers. Hermès received design medals at the Paris Expositions Universelles of 1855 and 1867, solidifying the company’s renown, word of which eventually traveled beyond France.

After the death of Thierry Hermès in 1878, his son, Charles-Émile Hermès, took over the company and expanded its reach. In 1880 he moved the workshop and store to the luxury brand’s present flagship location, 24 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. The store occupied a central space near the Église Sainte-Marie-Madeleine and the Paris Opera. The neighborhood had become a high-end shopping district during the reign of Napoleon III (1852–70) and the reconstruction of the city under Georges-Eugène Haussmann (1853–70). By the early 20th century the brand was drawing in well-heeled international clients, including Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.

Charles-Émile Hermès, in turn, passed the reins in 1902 to his sons, Adolphe Hermès and Émile-Maurice Hermès. During the brothers’ tenure the company became Hermès Frères (“Hermès Brothers”), but the siblings were in conflict about the direction of Hermès. Adolphe Hermès, the elder brother, wanted to hew to the company’s traditional focus on equestrian goods, while Émile Hermès felt that they should expand its offerings to adapt to a 20th-century culture that was becoming less reliant on horsepower. Émile Hermès ultimately prevailed, buying his brother out of the company in 1919 and investing in the production of travel luggage, women’s handbags, belts, and other leather accessories targeted at well-traveled and well-to-do customers. The company continued to sell saddles and other horse-riding equipment into the 21st century.

Émile Hermès worked closely with his son-in-law Robert Dumas to launch a number of the company’s most notable and sought-after items, including the Petit Sac à Courroies in 1935 and the silk scarf in 1937. The former is a structured trapezoidal purse that was renamed the Kelly bag in 1977, after American actress Grace Kelly, who popularized the item. For the silk scarf, or carré (“square”), as the company calls it, referring to its signature square shape, the brand commissioned museum curators and artists to find and create unique patterns, with motifs often referencing the company’s equestrian origins.

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A model holding a Hermès Birkin 40 bag in box calf leather.

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In 1951 Robert Dumas succeeded his father-in-law as the fourth-generation head of Hermès, followed by his son Jean-Louis Dumas as the fifth-generation leader in 1978. Jean-Louis Dumas sought to extend the company’s reach into untapped international markets, as well as promote the brand to younger French consumers, spurring an expansion into home goods and updating ready-to-wear offerings. Under Dumas’s leadership Hermès hired such noted fashion designers as Martin Margiela (1997–2003) and Jean-Paul Gaultier (2003–10) as creative directors. The company also introduced, in 1984, one of its most in-demand products, the Birkin bag.

After Jean-Louis Dumas retired in 2006, management of the luxury house transitioned to Patrick Thomas, the first nonfamily member to lead Hermès since its founding, though he had worked intermittently at the company for more than a decade. Thomas decentralized global corporate operations and expanded the brand’s portfolio into fine jewelry. During his tenure Thomas also successfully staved off a hostile takeover. In 2010 Bernard Arnault’s LVMH luxury conglomerate unexpectedly revealed that it had quietly amassed a major stake in Hermès through equity derivatives, but Thomas fiercely opposed the intrusion. He united more than 50 descendants of the Hermès family to form a unified holding company named H51, which locked up a majority of the company’s shares and effectively blocked LVMH from executing a corporate takeover.

In 2013 company leadership returned to the founding lineage with the appointment of Axel Dumas, a sixth-generation family member and nephew of Jean-Louis Dumas. Axel Dumas modernized the legacy brand by spearheading a major digital transformation, including a comprehensive overhaul of its global e-commerce infrastructure. Under his leadership the company achieved record-breaking financial growth, resulting in its admission to France’s benchmark CAC 40 index in 2018. To meet unprecedented global demand for iconic leather goods while preserving strict artisanal standards, Dumas also oversaw the strategic expansion of localized, highly specialized production facilities throughout France.

Hermès is widely considered one of the most successful luxury brands in the world. It continues to utilize high-quality materials intended to last for decades, and its approximately 7,000 trained artisans retain traditional skills dating to the company’s origins. Each Birkin bag continues to be handmade by a single worker, limiting the quantity available each year. As Maliha Shoaib noted in Vogue Business in 2025, “Hermès is a rare example of a brand whose demand truly outweighs supply.” This high demand, coupled with the high prices of their products, has made the Hermès family one of the wealthiest in the world, with an estimated net worth of $184.5 billion in 2026.

The meticulous production cycle for Birkin bags, however, has contributed to their scarcity, and some critics have complained that the purses have been more readily available to existing, ultra-wealthy customers of the brand. Indeed, an antitrust class-action lawsuit was filed against Hermès in 2024. The case was dismissed by a U.S. federal court judge in 2025, but the plaintiffs appealed that decision the following year. Hermès has also been criticized by animal rights groups such as PETA for using animal skins from crocodile farms and similar facilities in its handbags and other items. The company counters that it has worked to source its wares humanely and sustainably.