kottke.org posts about Hermes
An Hermes Birkin bag costs between $10,000 and $150,000, and women of a certain income bracket who own Birkin bags are putting their babies in them.
There are babies in blue Birkin bags, babies in green Birkin bags, babies in patterned Birkin bags, babies in unknown original color Birkin bags, and babies in bougainvillea ostrich Birkin bags.
This woman made her daughter a Birkin bag Halloween costume.
Who started the Baby-in-a-Birkin trend?
It appears Maggie Simpson is the culprit.
Kermit Oliver is a postal employee who lives in Waco, Texas. He is also the designer of a very popular series of Hermès scarves:
How that happened is an interesting story.
The sixteen scarves that Kermit has designed for Hermès represent three decades of work. Kermit takes six months to a year to design each one, depending on the intricacy of the image and the research required. When he finally arrives at a finished composition, he paints it onto a ninety-by-ninety-centimeter square of watercolor paper, the same size as the scarves, and sends it by FedEx to Hermès in Paris. After the design atelier there approves it, it moves on to the production facility in Lyon, where each color in the painting is traced onto ninety-centimeter-square slides and, in turn, each slide is etched onto a silk screen. That is to say, every color requires its own screen, and because Kermit’s work is both so colorful and so intricate, his scarves are some of the most laborious to print. They are also some of the most beloved. T. Boone Pickens’s wife, Madeleine, and Chase Bank executive Elaine Agather are said to be huge collectors. And while there are thousands of scarves designed by Kermit in the world, they are so treasured that few are ever available for purchase at any given time, and the handful that do make it to eBay sell for $800 or $900. An employee of the Hermès store in Houston told me that when a new design of Kermit’s is announced, it usually sells out before it even hits the floor.
(via @youngna)
Hermes has a handy PDF file that shows you how to tie their famous scarves into all sorts of configurations, like so:
You can even fold some of the larger scarves into handbags.
This report from Vogue has inspired a new tag: Not The Onion.
The recession seemed like a far-removed concept for Hermes this morning, as the luxury retailer announced it is breeding its own crocodiles to keep up with the demand for its iconic handbags.
(via @bldgblog)
The iconic Birkin bag made by Hermes is supposedly so difficult to find that there’s a two-year waiting list. In his book, Bringing Home the Birkin, Michael Tonello says the list is just a marketing ploy and that he was able to buy Birkin bags whenever he wanted.
“I would go into a store with a list in my Hermes Ulysse notebook and pile up scarves, shawls, bracelets, worth about $2,000. This made me seem a regular Hermes client,” Tonello told Reuters in a telephone interview. “Once I had that pile ready to buy at the last moment I’d ask for a Birkin and they would usually produce one of the back room. In 2005 I bought 130 Birkins in a three-month period — and you tell me there is a waiting list?”
The Birkin retails for thousands (and sometimes tens of thousands) of dollars and can be see here in situ, on the arms of celebrity millionaires. Lindsey Lohan looks like she can just about fit into hers. (via clusterflock)
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