The Case of the Hermès Mountain Bike: Inside the secret world of bespoke Hermès, where just about anything can be made in the house’s legendary leathers. by Jason Sheeler. Photographs by François Coquerel
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AT 8 A . M . E AC H M O R N I N G shoppers begin lining up outside the Hermès store on Paris’s Rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré for limited-edition Birkins, Kellys, and silk carrés. But about half an hour away, in the suburb of Pantin, is the really good stuff. There, inside an industrial warehouse, are one-of-akind boxing gloves, wallets, woven baskets, Foosball tables, motorcycles, hockey sticks, Aston Martins, powerboats—all reimagined and reconfigured in the house’s leathers, silks, and 19th-century traditions. Each one is born from the union of a customer’s mind and a craftsperson’s hands. The facility sits behind a door marked with an understated little leather sign reading hermès horizons. About 30 artisans work inside what Hermès Le Sur-Mesure calfskin boxing gloves, $44,100. Opposite: The interior of a 1935 Avions Voisin C28 Aérosport upholstered in Hermès leather.
looks like an airplane hangar but was previously a movie studio’s soundstage. Known internally as Le Sur-Mesure, Horizons is where “anything is possible,” Axel de Beaufort says. A former yacht designer, de Beaufort has run the Horizons facility since 2012. “Almost anything,” the lanky 40-year-old Frenchman corrects himself. There are some conditions. The finished product has to look like Hermès, as well as be a fun project for de Beaufort and his team. Most commissions that come to Horizons are requested at one of the 300 Hermès boutiques around the world and require, on average, about a year to create. But “it takes as long as it takes,” says de Beaufort. Customers come in looking for, say, a coat or a Birkin bag and then realize they’d like it to be a little different from the one available in the store—or perhaps they have a new car or motorcycle or yacht and they want the seating or interior customized with Hermès leather.
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They fill out a form that lists their desires, and a proposal is sent back to the customer in about three months. About nine months later they have their new bespoke object. This is the kind of assignment that falls under “looks like Hermès.” Then there’s the “fun” part. De Beaufort once made a boom box for Janet Jackson. “It was funny.” (De Beaufort uses fun and funny interchangeably.) “Today somebody is asking us to do a ping-pong table,” he says. Fun, it seems, takes a little more negotiation up front, and the bar is a bit higher. A discussion begins. De Beaufort has to determine whether a ping-pong table is something he wants to do. He begins to determine what Hermès could add to the world of ping-pong tables. “Because if it’s just a matter of buying a ping-pong table and putting an Hermès stamp on it—we don’t do branding products.” The table was never made. With anything the artisans create, the goal is to continually refine the design. For a recent skateboard
Below: An Hermès Le Sur-Mesure handwoven picnic basket trimmed in calf leather, price upon request. Opposite: An artisan’s workspace at the Hermès Horizons facility.
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Above: Axel de Beaufort, director of the Hermès Horizons facility. Opposite: A Yamaha Virago motorbike dressed by Hermès Le Sur-Mesure in water-resistant leather with white saddle stitching.
project, de Beaufort was able to print a drawing on wood in a way that had never been done before. But he doesn’t think he’s always improving on a design. “It would be very pretentious [to think] I could manage to improve. We want to interpret differently.” He does want each commissioned project to be a challenge for the craftsperson and the house, which can benefit all of Hermès: It can also turn into a new product for the company. For example, a commissioned yoga mat might one day become a regular in-store item. Other times, they have to say no, for both technical and artistic reasons. A baby stroller was not created due to legal and safety requirements. But commissions for boxing gloves, a mountain bike, and a picnic basket were greenlit. More than anything, even with the “fun” projects, de Beaufort aims for what he calls “the pure authenticity of things.” Extraordinarily detail-oriented, he is known to spend days on the leather edging of yacht doorknobs.
(“You have staff that bring you the coffee and everything. But your door, you open it yourself, it is something that you touch.”) The boxing gloves were made by an artisan at Horizons who spars daily. The picnic basket was outsourced to a small town in Provence known for its cane weaving. Trends are never discussed. This facility, he explains, is not about couture. “Fashion is fashion, and we are in the fashion industry, after all.” But commissions like designing a bike are not seen as just an opportunity to make a fabulous thing, but to further the craftsmanship of Hermès and even biking. De Beaufort explains how the collaboration between Horizons artisans and external workshops is fluid and essential. He found a partner who makes bikes (Time Sport International in Lyon), and made the bike out of carbon fiber with the most exquisite handles imaginable. “We redesigned a bike, yes, but not just to make a style experience. We wanted to go for the lightest bike in the world. It was fun.”