Hermès CEO: Couture Plans Are ‘Moving Forward’

PARIS — Hermès has embarked on a recruitment drive to build a specialised Paris workshop to power a push into haute couture, expanding its offer for its wealthiest clients.

“It’s moving forward,” CEO Axel Dumas told analysts at the annual results presentation of the French leather goods group on Thursday.

The company has yet to set a launch date for the project, to be piloted by women’s artistic director Nadège Vanhée.

“We’ll be ready when we’re ready,” the executive said. But at the group’s annual results a year ago, Dumas suggested the category could be launched as soon as 2026 or 2027.

The move into couture, where hand-made dresses can take hundreds of hours of work and fetch prices in the tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars, would offer the leather goods powerhouse another way to engage its loyal and deep-pocketed client base, willing to wait months and even years to purchase Kelly and Birkin handbags costing upwards of $10,000, and add another powerful anchor point for its top-end luxury positioning.

The push into couture would also serve to strengthen and showcase Hermès’ top-quality production base, which is tightly controlled by the company and relies on artisans with specific know-how built over years of experience.

Hermès plans to eventually employ around 20 couturier artisans in the new couture workshop, which, for the moment, will be housed in the group’s Pantin headquarters in a Northern suburb of Paris, Dumas said.

The addition of haute couture follows the fast growth of the brand’s high-end ready-to-wear lines, which generated €4.5 billion in revenue last year, accounting for nearly a third of group sales, up from €1.4 billion in 2020.

“What I’ve seen is great – I’m quite excited,” Dumas said of the work underway.

Hermès on Thursday beat market expectations with a 9.8 percent rise in fourth quarter sales, with strong growth from all regions in the US market.

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Hermès Reports 9.8% Revenue Growth in Fourth Quarter, Beating Expectations

Sales in the Americas region, mainly the United States, rose by 12.1 percent, beating expectations of around 9 percent.