Insider's secret

While the Birkin, Constance and Kelly may be the most well-known, Hermès has 50 different styles that marry form and function with ease. Catherine Fulconis from the luxury maison rounds them up with Priyanka Khanna

- Priyanka Khanna

Like bras and heels, in the midst of pan-demic-induced stay-at-home orders, the handbag was summarily dismissed as a relic of a sartorial past. The reasoning, as Vanessa Friedman summed up in The New York Times in December 2020, was based on its very functionality: “What was the point of a bag if no one could go out? Why did we ever think we needed so many of them in the first place? What are we supposed to do with all of those extra totes and purses and clutches?” she wrote in ‘The Once And Future Handbag’. But the demise of the handbag, Friedman concluded, was widely exaggerated. The booming numbers in the resale market, the rare Himalayan Kelly that fetched nearly half a million dollars at Christie’s (the highest price ever paid for a bag at an auction) and the growing market for collectible editions are all indicators that the handbag is never really going to go away.

What has emerged from the past 18 months is a change in mindset. Now, the need for quality, for pieces that weather trends and generations, that have the patina of inherent style and also whisper quietly of a more conscious approach to fashion, are non-negotiable.

At Hermès, these are the very values the house was founded on, and which have paid dividends for it and its patrons over the years. “At Hermès, we don’t make it bags, but objects made to last. Each time we create a bag, our aim is that it is of its time, is timeless, and becomes a classic. This is an extraordinary richness, resulting in leather goods with strong style and personality,” says Catherine Fulconis, member of the Executive Committee of Hermès International and executive vice president of Hermès international’s leather goods, saddlery and petit h divisions.