# Thierry Hermès

Thierry Hermès (pronounced; 10 January 1801 – 10 January 1878) was a French leather-harness maker and fashion designer. He is the founder of Hermès.

## Early life and education

Thierry Hermès was born in 1801 in the city of Krefeld in modern-day Germany, which was at the time part of the Roer department of the French First Republic as a result of the Revolutionary Wars; he was thus born a French citizen. Hermès was the sixth child of an innkeeper and his wife, Agnese Kuhnen. After the death of his parents in 1821, Hermès moved to France as an orphan. He settled in Pont-Audemer and became an apprentice to a local artisan harness-maker. After moving to Paris, he founded Hermès in 1837, which was originally a horse harness factory located in the Parisian neighborhood known as Grands Boulevards.

## Career

In 1837, Thierry Hermès founded the Hermès company, a workshop specialized in the manufacturing of horse harnesses, on the Rue Basse du Rempart in Paris. Hermès specialized in the horse harnesses required by society traps, caleches, and carriages. He built his business on the strength of a stitch that could only be done by hand. The saddle stitch was completed when two needles worked two waxed linen threads in tensile opposition. The quality and beauty of Hermès bridles and harnesses were unrivalled for the Parisian beau monde who relied on equipage for travel and among the clients were the Emperor of the French himself, Napoleon III and his spouse, Eugénie de Montijo. The business he had established would, under his successors, in the generations that followed, evolve from harness and saddles to trunks, handbags, zippers, etc, the Hermès brand is now reputed for.

## Personal life and posterity

On 17 April 1828 Thierry Hermès married Christine Pétronille Piérart (1805 – 30 April 1896), daughter of Adrien Piérart and Madeleine Cordé. They had one son named Charles-Émile. He took over the family business and moved the store to 24 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré; this meant that the store was now in proximity to wealthy clients. Charles-Émile had two sons of his own, Adolphe and Émile-Maurice, who were involved in the family business building elite clientele in Europe, America, North Africa and Asia. Adolphe left Émile-Maurice with the business as he believed that the company had a limited future in the era of horseless carriages. Émile-Maurice noticed the demand for saddlery, leading him to steer Hermès towards the making of "saddle-stitched" leather goods and trunks for the customers who traveled by car, train or ship. After realizing the company was diving into the age of automobiles, Émile-Maurice acquired a two-year patent for the zipper which was known as the "Hermès Fastener". Once the zipper was introduced, the clothing era was transformed. Other businesses such as Coco Chanel wanted to learn from them due to their rapid growth and popularity. Émile Hermès' sons-in-law, Robert Dumas-Hermès (1898-1978) and Jean-René Guerrand-Hermès (1901-1993) took over the company in 1950. In 1993, the company went public but the ownership of 80% of the shares remained with Hermès family members.

## Legacy

Hermès has many innovations which are still known to this day. The Hermès zipper founded in 1923 is used in many of the bags today. The silk Hermès used for jockeys' blouses developed the first silk scarf, "Jeu des Omnibus et Dames blanches" in 1923. Around the 1930s, Hermès International launched several items that became classics, including the large crocodile handbag known later as the Kelly, named for Grace Kelly. The company later developed men's neckties, watches, and new scarf designs. Today, Hermès features products like charms (starting at $40) and an oversize panda-bear bean-bag made of Clémnce bull-calf leather (most expensive at $100,000). One of the known classics, the Birkin, was named after actress Jane Birkin and created by Jean-Louis Dumas in 1984. Today, Hermès has 283 stores worldwide. Since 1923, Hermès has a color theme every year for their collections, creating limited edition items like the "Year of the River" (2005) silk scarf.