When Robert Dumas, son-in-law of Émile Hermès, creates the ladies' bag with straps in the 1930s, Hermès enters the era of boldness and modernism. Yet, its destiny does not end there. To make it a legend, a photograph is all it takes – one of Grace Kelly holding the bag over her stomach to conceal the signs of her pregnancy. The Kelly is born.

Hermès has essentially turned sustainability into its own metièr, driving not only excess production materials to it but also the designers and craftspeople—the people behind the savoir-faire—necessary to produce desirable objects in themselves.Directed by its open-ended objectives and imbued with a sense of lightheartedness, these designers dream up inventive yet functional and visually appealing concepts for re-combining materials from the other departments in ways that may seem unique in theory but natural in execution. 

Who could have imagined that one of the most coveted objects of recent decades would be born in the sky, in 1984, on a flight from Paris to London? British actress Jane Birkin, sitting next to Jean-Louis Dumas, Executive Chairman of Hermès (1978-2006), was complaining that she couldn't find a bag suitable for her needs as a young mother.