Hermès: How a Harness Maker's Heirs Built the Birkin and Beat LVMH

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Thierry Hermès, born in 1801 in Krefeld to a French father and German mother, trained as a saddler and harness maker in Pont-Audemer and opened a Paris workshop near La Madeleine in 1837. He made carriage harnesses, not fashion, using the saddle stitch, in which two needles cross a single linen thread through each hole so the seam holds even if one stitch breaks. His harnesses won a first-class medal at the 1867 Exposition Universelle. His son Charles-Émile moved the business in 1880 to 24 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, still the headquarters. His grandson Émile-Maurice, visiting the United States during World War I, saw cars replacing horses and secured exclusive French rights to the zipper for leather goods.

Émile-Maurice designed handbags in 1922 after his wife could not find one she liked, and the silk carrés arrived in 1937. Robert Dumas's 1930s document bag became the Kelly bag after Grace Kelly was photographed shielding her pregnancy with it, and orange packaging came from wartime shortages of other dyes. Jean-Louis Dumas, in charge from 1978, sketched the Birkin with Jane Birkin on a flight in 1984, hired Martin Margiela and Jean-Paul Gaultier, and listed the company in 1993 with the family keeping 80 percent. In 2010 LVMH revealed a 17.1 percent stake built through cash-settled equity swaps, and family heirs pooled 50.2 percent of the capital into a holding company called H51. LVMH backed off in 2014.

• The first zippered leather golf jacket, made in 1918, was for the Prince of Wales.
• Each heavy silk twill scarf uses roughly 300 mulberry moth cocoons.
• Jane Birkin and Jean-Louis Dumas drew the first Birkin sketch on an airline sickness bag.
• Under sixth-generation CEO Axel Dumas, revenue hit 16 billion euros with no assembly lines and one artisan per bag.
• The company owns crocodile farms in Australia, which have drawn criticism from PETA, and says it meets international welfare standards.