TheFashionableTruth, Author at The Fashionable Truth

Romeo Gigli’s comeback enthralls Asia as he casts his critical eye at European fashion

He was one of the world’s most admired and successful designers of the 1990s, then Romeo Gigli lost it all. As he makes a quiet comeback in Venice, Italy’s fashion maestro tells Luke Leitch how his...

Andrew Keith, Romeo Gigli and Carina Lau

Romeo Gigli’s FW 2013 collection at Joyce

Romeo Gigli Iconic fashion designer Romeo Gigli came to Hong Kong last month to launch his gorgeous Fall Winter 2013 collection at Joyce, where he joined the growing ranks of designers who have become...

Thai Art at 10 Chancery Lane Gallery

The early summer is when Hong Kong enters art frenzy and the city is awash in inspiring work and captivating exhibitions. There is no better place to acquire the buzz and the beauty of it all than at...

In Shanghai the Peninsula offers an exquisite window on China’s complex history

PENINSULA SHANGHAI As a child in England in the 1960s I had a dream of visiting Shanghai. The auteur in my head imagined a place of intense struggle, suppressed...

That tradition was shaken last year when LVMH, the world’s largest agglomeration of luxury marques (including Louis Vuitton), acquired a 22 per cent stake in Hermès. To secure Hermès from LVMH, 50 relations from three branches of the family recently met to establish a watertight holding company that owns 51 per cent of Hermès, and which cannot be sold for 20 years. “Although we’re confident,” Pierre-Alexis says, “we will remain paranoid until the end. It was really a Nietzschean moment, it didn’t destroy us, so it made us stronger. When I pass this company on to the seventh generation, then I will believe I’ve done my job.” “No,’ Pierre-Alexis says baldly. ‘I don’t. It’s not my bag.” A few days later, I visit an Hermès facility on the outskirts of Paris. Once my passport is politely confiscated, and I am firmly admonished against photography, the experience proves cheery. The vision of Hermès at the Leather Forever exhibition did not include the snaps of David Beckham or Daphne Guinness (toting an Hermès) that are Blu-Tacked to Parisian workers’ desks, or the laughter-punctured murmur of chatter, machine-whirr and banging (during ‘perlage’, the attachment of hardware to bags) that fills the room. The craftsmen and women I meet (all quite young) appear both genuinely charming and charmed by their jobs. They say the Plume – the company’s oldest bag design – is the most difficult to make, and that the average time it takes to make a bag is two and a half weeks. A recently hired 17-year-old named Dimitri, wearing piercings and jeans, has just finished his first Kelly, coloured a glowing light blue, and made inside out to reduce the appearance of stitching on the exterior. In front of us, with infinite slowness and the help of a tiny iron to reduce stress to its calfskin, he turns the bag outside in again – and beams like a new father when the delivery is flawlessly complete. Another worker, a cool, slightly older chap named Julien Serange, says, “We don’t feel like machines here, because we do everything from the beginning to the end, from A to Z. It is a pleasure to do this.” Even if you’ve no intention of spending thousands of pounds on a handbag, it is certainly interesting to see how the world’s finest are made. And the determination of the people who run it is impressive too. Pierre-Alexis may be a little prickly, but who wouldn’t be in the face of an unwanted outside attempt to wrest control of a company built, and loved, by six generations? As he says, “As long as the Hermès house remains a family business – and as long as we’re alive – I can tell you that we will be here to remind people that there are human beings behind an object. An object is a tenet of culture, and it has a soul. If we forget that, we die.”

In China Hermès is searching for success with a powerful set of tools

THE LUXURY COMPANY HERMèS HAS BEEN CREATING LEATHER ACCESSORIES FOR 175 YEARS, FROM ITS BIRTH AS A SADDLEMAKER TO ITS LATE 20TH CENTURY REINVENTION AS THE wORLD’S MOST...

A 62-gun salute from the Tower of London for H.M. Queen Elizabeth II

In London Royal Salute whisky joins hands with the monarchy to protect England’s regal palaces

With a thunderous roar cannons from the Honourable Company of Fusiliers gave a regal salute to Queen Elizabeth II as she passed by the Tower of London on her diamond jubilee...

In London Stephen Webster makes celebrity jewelry a rock and roll art form

Webster’s high jewellery collection is known for its bright stones Stephen Webster is the king of celebrity jewelers but his wedding rings for Madonna and bracelets for Christina...

Biologique Recherche’s Ambassade de la Beauté in Paris

In Paris Biologique Recherche have created a spa that is a source of magic for the jet set

There are a host of skincare products on the market but few are backed by the level of technical expertise and devotion to detail that is found at Biologique Recherche. As Daniel...

Christian Dior in 1951; he reigned supreme at his couture house until his sudden death in 1957

Inside Dior, the struggle to replace John Galliano was an epic battle

John Galliano departed from The House of Dior over one year ago. Speculation about who would replace him raged throughout 2011, but now the more interesting question is why it has taken so long to...

Former dancers stay fit on a snow-covered lake in Changchun. Many Women born in China during the 1950s made tremendous sacrifices so that there children could have a better life.

Chinese heroines take centre stages as female entrepreneurs rise to the top

Chairman Mao believed that women had an equal role to play in building a great country, and now a thriving group of wealthy female entrepreneurs is emerging, driven on by the sacrifices...

Author TheFashionableTruth