For many of us, working at Hermès seems like a dream job—the finest materials, the exquisite hand craftsmanship, the luxury of taking time to make something special and unique. Lucky for us, in this instalment of Vogue’s A Day in the Life, we get an exclusive behind the scenes look at the maison’s atelier in Pantin, near Paris, courtesy of Priscila Alexandre Spring, the maison’s leather goods creative director.
We join Alexandre Spring at her office, as she works to finesse some of her designs. “I grew up in this environment, with my family always working with their hands,” she explains sitting at her desk. But it was her grandmother that inadvertently taught her a valuable lesson that is no doubt also at the heart of Hermès. “My grandma was an embroiderer and she always taught me that the most beautiful embroidery is the reverse, as it needs to be just as beautiful as the outside.”
Afterwards, she walks us through meetings with different departments where we get to witness the process that Hermès bags go through; from sketch, to small maquettes made from paper and special pieces constructed from salpa, a bonded leather that allows the designer to experiment with the placement of pockets or buckles. Then it’s off to the atelier where Alexandre Spring introduces some of the artisans that are constructing bags by hand; stitching the pieces of leather together and problem-solving the way metal closures will be attached to a future bag. “We love noise at Hermès,” adds Alexandre Spring about the metal tinkling of brass pieces against each other. “We listen to the metals to make sure we like the sound they make. These are the little details that we pay a lot of attention to.”
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This article was originally published on Vogue.com.
