The Hermes bag starts off life in the leather cutting workshop. Each one is made up of several different skins. When I visit the atelier, a craftsman is working in silence, trying to match up the size and shape of the scales on different pieces of emerald green-dyed crocodile skin, which will eventually be used to make one of Hermes’ iconic bags – the Birkin. Two or three separate skins will be used for the bag so it’s essential that the scales are of a similar size and appearance. The craftsman has templates of the bag’s many sections which he places on the skin to see if they will fit. Only the stomach skin of the crocodile, which is commercially farmed, is used, and it must be centred on the bag so the spine is in the middle. This is a painstaking process that requires precision and attention to detail. Each craft worker, a roughly equal mix of men and women, cuts five or six bags a day. Once the pieces of leather are selected and cut, they are placed in a tray and passed on to the next workshop. It is here in the production atelier that the bag really takes shape. All around, dozens of workers are intently stitching together Birkin bags. As with all Hermes leather goods, each bag is sewn from start to finish by just one person.
It takes between 18 and 25 hours to piece together a Birkin bag, depending on the material used, so each craftsman makes no more than two per week.
While the workshop is modern, the craftsmanship is traditional and the tools have not changed in 150 years – a grid, which bites the leather, leaving an imprint that serves as a guide for stitching; an awl, which punctures the leather to make way for the needles; and the blunt needles used to do the stitching. The stitching methods used in saddlery are used on the bags to make them durable. Each bag is hand-stitched using a single thread coated in beeswax. A needle at each end crosses the stitch over itself between the two pieces of leather before the stitches are doubled to ensure the bag can withstand wear and tear – should one stitch break, the rest will remain intact.
The ateliers are quiet places where only the sounds of the tools and the faint hiss of music from the workers’ iPods punctuate the silence. Forget about white coats too – most staff are dressed in casual threads, and a few have hardcore custom tattoos. Most people working here are in their twenties, thirties and forties. Many have worked here since school, serving out apprenticeships to gain the necessary skills.
When they join Hermes each staffer receives a set of tools which they keep for the duration of their career. These tools are closely guarded and not lent out to others. The tools are used to attach the hardware to the leather, and after stitching the sections together are used to polish the exposed edges of the leather to make them smooth. All bags are sewn together inside out to ensure the interior is as perfect as the exterior.
Finally the bags have to be meticulously turned the right way round upon completion, an incredibly tricky task as the leather must be coaxed centimetre by centimetre. The slightest error could result in the leather becoming scratched or damaged and the bag needing to be scrapped. On my visit, one of the craftsmen is about to embark on turning a white and grey alligator Birkin bag. I hover near him nervously as my guide advises me that this bag will eventually retail for around £20,000. Thankfully, all goes well and the bag just needs to pass a series of quality control tests before it will be on its way to one of Hermes’ boutiques around the world, including Glasgow. The bag will go into one of the brand’s distinctive orange boxes.
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