Forty-one years after Hermès established its inaugural Los Angeles shop on Rodeo Drive, the venerable French luxury-goods concern has returned to L.A. to write the next chapter in its 176-year history. In true Gallic style, the company celebrated the opening of its new West Coast flagship with orange-clad acrobats, French horns, Champagne, caviar, and lots of silk scarves. It was quite a show.
During the festivities, CEO Axel Dumas summarized the triumphs—and occasional tribulations—of the company’s adventures in the New World, which began in the early 20th century, when Hermès executives traveled to New York and witnessed the advent of the age of the automobile. Realizing that the family’s core business of saddlery and other equine equipage would soon become a niche market, Charles-Émile Hermès channeled the firm’s resources into luxury goods and fashion. But just as soon as it was poised for a bright new future, an ill-timed decision to open a shop in New York City in 1928 brought Hermès to the brink of bankruptcy.
Happily, the company recovered its footing and eventually decided to stake its claim in America by planting an Hermès store in Beverly Hills in 1972—a safe 2,790 miles away from the New York Stock Exchange. A commitment Hermès has now reaffirmed with a landmark boutique that synthesizes the twin strands of traditional craftsmanship and contemporary élan that define the brand.
The new boutique was conceived by Denis Montel of Paris-based RDAI (Rena Dumas Architecture Intérieure), the firm responsible for all Hermès boutiques worldwide. Among its many bravura design moments, the space features a white marble façade of deeply set, canted windows, a quietly dramatic spiral staircase that reads like minimalist sculpture, and a seemingly weightless skylight that trades glass for a cushion of air wrapped in a high-tech membrane of clear plastic.
L.A.’s beau monde turned out in force for the lavish post-opening party in Culver City at a 30,000-square-foot production studio that was transformed into a madcap collage of Gay Paris, replete with an indoor Seine and a piscine spectaculaire stocked with bathing beauties and shapely jeunes homes—indeed, something for everyone. Bienvenue à nouveau à Los Angeles!
