An exclusive behind the scenes look at the maison’s atelier in Pantin.
Director: Nikki Petersen
Director of Photography: Étienne Baussan
Editor: Evan Allan
Senior Producer: Jordin Rocchi
Associate Director, Creative Development: Alexandra Gurvitch
Gaffer: Adam Pelle
Audio: David Amselem
Associate Producer: Megan Sinanis
Production Coordinator: Ava Kashar
Production Manager: Natasha Soto-Albors
Line Producer: Romeeka Powell
Senior Director, Production Management: Jessica Schier
Assistant Editor: Andy Morell
Post Production Coordinator: Jovan James
Supervising Editor: Erica Deleo
Post Production Supervisors: Edward Taylor, Alexa Deutsch
Director of Content, Production: Rahel Gebreyes
Senior Director, Programming: Linda Gittleson
Executive Producer: Ruhiya Nuruddin
VP, Digital Video English: Thespena Guatieri
Director: Nikki Petersen
Director of Photography: Étienne Baussan
Editor: Evan Allan
Senior Producer: Jordin Rocchi
Associate Director, Creative Development: Alexandra Gurvitch
Gaffer: Adam Pelle
Audio: David Amselem
Associate Producer: Megan Sinanis
Production Coordinator: Ava Kashar
Production Manager: Natasha Soto-Albors
Line Producer: Romeeka Powell
Senior Director, Production Management: Jessica Schier
Assistant Editor: Andy Morell
Post Production Coordinator: Jovan James
Supervising Editor: Erica Deleo
Post Production Supervisors: Edward Taylor, Alexa Deutsch
Director of Content, Production: Rahel Gebreyes
Senior Director, Programming: Linda Gittleson
Executive Producer: Ruhiya Nuruddin
VP, Digital Video English: Thespena Guatieri
Category
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PeopleTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 Hi, Vogue.
00:04 My name is Priscilla Alexander-Spring.
00:05 I'm the Leather Goods Creative Director at Hermès.
00:08 We're in Pantin, near Paris.
00:10 And you'll be spending the day with me today, so let's go.
00:15 We have a very strong heritage and a really beautiful history.
00:18 I hope that when you buy a bag from Hermès,
00:21 it's love at first sight, but also something that you're
00:24 going to hold for a long time.
00:26 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:29 [SPEAKING FRENCH]
00:34 So this is our studio, our Leather Goods studio,
00:36 where the team works.
00:38 And we're very excited to share with you,
00:40 because it's the first time we open our door.
00:42 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:45 I'll take you to my office.
00:46 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:50 I grew up in this environment of, like, with my family
00:55 always working with their hands.
00:57 And myself, I've always loved to draw.
00:59 And that was really what my passion was as a child.
01:03 And I spent hours and hours and hours sketching.
01:06 My grandma was an embroiderer.
01:07 And she always taught me how the most beautiful
01:11 in embroidery is the reverse, as it should
01:13 be as beautiful as the outside.
01:16 And my dad was a self-taught creative,
01:20 so I always watched him doing a lot of painting, sculpture.
01:24 Usually, I do, like, little sketches just
01:26 to explain more or less what the idea is.
01:29 And then it's going to be a discussion with the maquettees.
01:32 And we're going to try to make them 3D maquette.
01:35 Then if we like it, we'll move on to leather.
01:38 Three?
01:40 I don't know.
01:40 Do you have five seconds?
01:41 Of course.
01:42 So it's going to be right on time for the show.
01:44 Yeah.
01:45 Perfect.
01:45 And then I took several ones.
01:47 OK, cool.
01:48 They did it in Salpa, right?
01:50 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:51 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:55 To explain, this is the Salpa.
01:57 It's a material like a fabric that we use that simulates leather,
02:01 because it really behaves like leather.
02:03 The good thing is that we can make several mock-ups, as you can see,
02:07 and we can play with it before actually using the real leather.
02:12 And really helps us to visualize how things are going to look
02:15 in the end, as you can see.
02:17 Thank you.
02:17 Thank you.
02:18 See you later.
02:19 Thank you.
02:19 [MUSIC PLAYING]
02:22 Salut.
02:23 Hi.
02:23 How are you?
02:24 Good, you?
02:25 Good.
02:26 How's it going?
02:27 Just working, as we talked about before, on Hermès' backpack.
02:30 The idea is to bring a new gesturality, something
02:33 a little bit more contemporary, but still
02:35 with the very recognizable codes of Hermès.
02:38 There's different ways to approach novelty in our collections.
02:42 We have a very strong heritage and a really beautiful history,
02:47 which is very inspiring.
02:48 But we also like to bring new ideas to the table
02:53 that are based on our classics, like the Kelly, the Birkin,
02:56 or the Roi Courrois.
02:57 We have these old equestrian catalogs, either by the shape,
03:01 a strap, a form.
03:02 It's endless the way we can be inspired by these old catalogs.
03:07 [MUSIC PLAYING]
03:10 It's an Hermès lift.
03:11 It's slow as hell.
03:14 [MUSIC PLAYING]
03:17 Bonjour, ça va?
03:19 Bonjour.
03:21 Salut.
03:22 Salut.
03:23 Hello, Christine.
03:25 Ça va?
03:26 Oui, ça va.
03:27 Oui.
03:28 This is Christine.
03:29 She coordinates and manages all the artisans
03:32 you'll see in this atelier.
03:34 And basically, she's the head of development,
03:37 and she makes sure that all the artisans
03:40 that are coming in are in the right place.
03:42 And she's also the head of the artisans' union.
03:45 And she makes sure that all the bags that leave Hermès,
03:50 they have to be validated by Christine.
03:53 Ça fait combien de temps que t'es là?
03:55 Une petite quarantaine d'années.
03:57 40 years.
03:58 She knows everything.
04:00 She is the queen.
04:01 That's how we call her, Queen Christine.
04:04 Voilà, la reine.
04:05 Oui, je comprends ça.
04:06 [LAUGHTER]
04:09 Hello.
04:10 Salut, Alexandre, ça va?
04:11 Bonjour.
04:12 Salut, Aurélie.
04:13 Hello.
04:14 Ça va?
04:15 Ça va.
04:16 Alors, ça se passe comment, ce Timor-Rhin?
04:18 Eh bien, ça se passe très bien.
04:20 Du coup, celui-ci, il est monté, et il est prêt à être cousu.
04:24 So I'm going to explain you.
04:26 Basically, we have this new bag with a little closure
04:29 that is, it looks like it's just hanging there.
04:32 And actually, what we're doing is that we have,
04:35 this is the same piece.
04:37 And basically, there's like little holes,
04:41 and then, Aurélie's going to stitch everything by hand.
04:45 So that we can then close our bag.
04:57 This bag was designed, and we did it in the studio
05:00 for like maybe three months.
05:02 And now, with the Bureau des Etudes,
05:04 maybe we're going to take like about six to nine months
05:08 to put it au point.
05:11 Okay, so now we're going to see Stéphane.
05:13 He's working with Alexandre, that is from the Bureau des Enfers,
05:16 which means the hardware workshop.
05:19 And they're trying to get the metal and the leather
05:22 working together, the magic.
05:24 Of this office.
05:25 Hello.
05:26 Hello.
05:27 Salut.
05:28 Salut, ça va?
05:29 Alors, difficile?
05:30 Bah oui.
05:31 Le but, c'est de réussir à glisser ça complètement dedans.
05:34 Comme ça.
05:35 Une fois que tu l'as glissé complètement, tu viens insérer l'anneau.
05:38 So this bag is inspired by a gigantic horse bit.
05:41 The idea is to hide the whole metal part with the leather.
05:45 We polish all our hardware by hand, and we use brass.
05:50 We love noise at Hermès, the noise that the metal does,
05:54 and the noise that a closure has.
05:56 So this is little details that we pay a lot of attention,
05:59 as well, that most people don't know.
06:02 We do spend a little time on just hearing the noise
06:05 and see if we like the noise.
06:06 Salut, Karine.
06:07 Bonjour.
06:08 Bonjour, ça va?
06:09 So this is the front of a Kelly.
06:12 Because we like the client not to feel anything in the back
06:16 when you touch your back inside, we make a little hole
06:20 where we will put this little closure.
06:28 Our artisans, they need to do four years of training
06:31 to be able to manufacture a Kelly bag.
06:35 This that you've just seen, the perlage,
06:38 you need to be very skilled and very, very good,
06:41 because if you miss one single second to the side,
06:45 you have to redo everything again.
06:47 So bravo, Karine.
06:49 Bonjour, Fabrice.
06:56 Bonjour.
06:57 Ça va?
06:58 Oui.
06:59 Fabrice is doing the last stitching on a Kelly bag.
07:03 A Kelly takes around 13 hours to be made,
07:07 depending on the materials that we make it.
07:09 I like the Kelly because it's an archetype.
07:11 It was made in the '30s, and it was always in the shelf
07:14 until Grace Kelly one day covered her pregnant belly
07:18 from paparazzi, and then that was it.
07:20 The rest is the history.
07:22 The Kelly became the Kelly.
07:24 So as you can see, we built a Kelly retourné.
07:28 It's made inside out.
07:29 It requires a lot of skill to turn it
07:32 and get it on the right way.
07:34 This is our stock of leathers
07:50 that we usually use to do our mock-ups.
07:53 We have about 200 colors always in collection
07:56 and about 50 materials,
07:58 including different leathers, as you can see.
08:00 Craftsmanship is really at the core of the maison.
08:03 Before anything, it's the work of women and men
08:06 that they do by hand.
08:08 It's been transmitted for many generations now,
08:11 so we do have our specific savoir-faire,
08:13 the way we stitch, the way we assemble.
08:16 The way we think about bags at Hermès
08:18 addresses longevity from the very beginning.
08:21 We think straight away, "How are we going to repair this?
08:24 How someone in maybe 30 years will repair this?"
08:27 So I think this addresses sustainability
08:29 in a very different way,
08:31 because also an ultimate goal with our bags
08:34 is that they last as long a time as possible.
08:37 Let me introduce you to Marc.
08:44 Marc has been working at Hermès for 25 years,
08:46 and he's just doing a Birkin picnic,
08:50 and he's going to show us how he's doing the little lace.
08:53 So to assemble the bag, the leather and the wicker,
08:57 everything is a little hand-lassage.
09:00 It takes about 8 hours to do the lacing all around the bag.
09:11 As you can see, Marc already started inside.
09:14 And 19 hours to do the whole bag.
09:19 [Music]
09:21 Okay, Vogue, I hope you spent a good day today with us
09:36 here at Hermès.
09:37 I hope you learned a lot about how we do things.
09:40 And it's nighttime, so time to go home.
09:42 See you soon!
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10:05 [BLANK_AUDIO]