TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/080690/0806205.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.3 KB | 115 lines

                                                                                BUSINESS, Page 52

As luxe as it gets


The bold scion of Hermes gives an Old World firm fresh pizazz

BY MARGOT HORNBLOWER/PARIS


    Jean-Louis Dumas won't sit still. He wants you to feel the
sleeve of his cashmere jacket, listen to the ping of his
crystal goblet, ponder the intricate pattern of his silk tie.
He wants you to follow him out a side door of his elegant
office and down a back staircase to a craftsman's workshop
virtually unchanged since the 19th century. All the while, he
is rhapsodizing, "This is amazing! This is unique! This is
fantastique!" In the workshop, with a view across the roofs of
Paris, a leatherworker hand-stitches one of four golf bags
ordered by a Tokyo real estate developer. The material:
fire-engine-red Indonesian crocodile hide. Price: $23,763 each.

    Money is not the issue for customers of Hermes, a onetime
harness shop founded in 1837 by Dumas's
great-great-grandfather. The object is mystique. Princess Grace
of Monaco christened the "Kelly handbag," a boxy Hermes classic
she often carried. Wearing an Hermes scarf, Queen Elizabeth
adorns a postage stamp. Lauren Bacall still slips into an
Hermes shop to pick up leatherbound datebooks, and Gregory Peck
to be fitted for handmade shoes. But if the rich and racy have
always known about Hermes, it is only recently that a New
Jersey stockbroker or a Dallas debutante has been able to buy
a piece of the dream in her own hometown.

    The rapid expansion of a once sleepy, snobbish concern into
a global retailing empire is a triumph for Dumas, 52, one of
17 cousins who control 87% of the firm. A silver-tongued
swashbuckler who spent a year as an assistant buyer for
Bloomingdale's in Manhattan, Dumas has boosted Hermes annual
sales ninefold, to $460 million, since he took over in 1978.
Moving aggressively into the U.S. and the Far East, he has
opened 80 new shops, bringing the total to 238. Thirty more are
planned. "Dumas is one of the brightest retailers in the
world," says Stanley Marcus, chairman emeritus of the
Neiman-Marcus stores. Marcus owns 175 Hermes silk ties,
hand-screened and hand-hemmed at $95 each. "It is a status
symbol," he admits. "But it is also the finest quality tie made
anywhere."

    Ties and scarves account for 43% of Hermes sales. But Dumas
is channeling growth into new areas by acquiring such choice
firms as John Lobb, the prestigious British shoemaker, and
Cristalleries de St. Louis, the 223-year-old French glassware
manufacturer. Fancy a pair of calfskin-clad garden shears?
(They will set you back $475.) A jungle-print bath  towel?
($525.) A suitcase made of carbon fiber, adapted from the
sheathing on the European Space Agency's Ariane rocket?
($5,450.)  Dumas has expanded the product line to 30,000 items.

    In the world of luxury, which ranks alongside aerospace as
France's primary export industry, Hermes likes to call itself
"a firm apart." It has resisted predatory takeover artists who
have swallowed up such venerable family strongholds as Louis
Vuitton and Lanvin. It has refused to license its name to sell
discount luggage a la Pierre Cardin or mass-produced hosiery
a la Christian Dior. But what really makes Hermes different is
its stubborn adherence to century-old manufacturing techniques.
"Hermes is an anachronism," says Gene Pressman, executive vice
president of Barney's, the upscale clothing chain. "It's about
quality that's made to last."

    Today if a woman wants to buy a calfskin Kelly bag ($2,850),
she often must endure a wait of as much as a year. Like all of
Hermes' leather goods, the bags are saddle stitched by hand and
finished off in melted beeswax in the workshops over its store
on the Rue du Faubourg-St.-Honore. Each bag is made from
scratch, one by one, by a team of two workers who stamp their
insignia inside. If the bag needs repair, even 10 years after
it is sold in Singapore or Seattle, it is shipped back to the
original craftsmen.

   In clothing, which represents about 12% of sales, Dumas has
broadened the company's designs beyond its trademark saddlery
patterns. But his refusal to give celebrity billing to
individual designers has made for mixed results. Nonetheless,
the back-to-basics fashion trend, which favors natural fibers
and hides, is successfully attracting younger customers.

    Unlike many French companies, Hermes uses local talent to
guide overseas operations. Says Chrysler Fisher, an Oklahoman
who is president of U.S. operations: "The word elitist makes
my blood curdle." Fisher has installed a toll-free phone number
to make Hermes products available "to any customer in Des
Moines." A postman in Waco, Texas, became Hermes' first U.S.
designer after drawing scarves featuring a Pawnee Indian chief
and a wild turkey.

    While Hermes plans to move its workshops and offices to
larger quarters in the Paris suburbs next spring, Dumas vows
that the company's standards must never suffer. Just to make
sure, he recently restructured the firm into a limited
partnership that sets up a "Fort Knox" of family control, even
if Hermes makes a public stock offering. Promises Dumas: "We
will continue to make things the way the grandfathers of our
grandfathers did."