Hermès’ new showroom in Jio World Plaza, Mumbai, has been designed as a place to admire craftsmanship. Known for its silk and leather métiers (workshops) and rich colour library (with silk alone making up 75,000 shades), Hermes’ second establishment in the city is a tribute to the French luxury giant’s history and India’s love for colour.

Sprinkled around the boutique are ephemera and tchotchkes collected over almost two centuries, such as historical portraits of golden orioles and framed collages of vintage horseshoes. Despite the newness of it all, they mark a milestone in the age and endurance of Hermès. Launched in 1837 in Paris by Thierry Hermès, a leather craftsman who custom-made harnesses for horses, Hermès today covers a wide range of passions, such as menswear (introduced in 1925), watches (1928) and, most famously, scarves (1937). In 2020, it even launched Beauty, for which a full counter has been dedicated at the new Mumbai space. With a presence in India since 2008—a flagship in Horniman Circle (2011) and a mall outlet in Delhi—this is its third boutique in the country.

On the day of the Mumbai launch, Eric Festy, Managing Director, South Asia, said, “It isn’t often that we open a new store. We are a sixth-generation family company, so we’re like an old lady. We take our time and we are very cautious.” In the three decades Festy has been with the company, he’s often asserted that “each store is different at Hermès.” And, the new Mumbai store hews to the same theme. A world removed from the lived-in and well-earned grandeur of the Fort Branch, Festy said, “We like it to be this way. We like to have these two expressions of the brand [because] here, we are in a shopping mall and it’s a retailer environment.” 

Designed by Paris-based architecture firm RDAI (RDAI has been Hermès’s go-to firm since 1978 when first commissioned to modernise its iconic Paris store on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré), the space has taken shape under the stewardship of artistic director Denis Montel. A mosaic floor at the entrance and merchandise mounted to resemble framed artworks appear to be common to new Hermès stores across the world, from Tokyo to New York. In Mumbai, the open-plan salon, bathed in macadamia shades, offers a visual breather to the brightly-coloured silk scarves and cashmere blankets. Divided into three sections, on the left is the perfumery, slim bottles filled with colours of the ocean; the silk section includes scarves and ties, with prints ranging from the botanical to the nautical; and to the right is homeware (Maison), with coffee mugs, plates, teapots, chessboards, poker sets, cushions, and a woollen rocking horse in a nod to Hermès’s equestrian beginnings.

A central antechamber has walls in twilight blue, and space for leather goods (handbags and riding gear), fine jewellery and timepieces. Here, the sandstone floor gets a hand-knotted rug, on which the colours rainbow from mustard yellow to Prussian blue, like a descending sun meeting a rising moon.

In the handbag section, you spot the Himalaya Birkin, the Birkin Faubourg, the Kelly picnic mini, the Steeple tote, and the Garden Party holdall, among others. Each bag gets its own alcove, placed reverentially, shrine-like, in a glass-and-wood grid. In front is a russet wooden table, with a leather mat, the colour of amber, where objects can be examined more closely. There’s room for seeing and room for touching. And, next to it, hidden tastefully behind a wall is the billing counter: the room for buying. At the back, two connecting rooms for womenswear and menswear are drenched in deep yellow, the colour of Alphonso flesh, in a hand-embroidered wall fabric. Made in Lucknow, it forms the backdrop for golf jackets, pullovers, knitwear, fur coats, trench coats, ties, and shoes. 

Finally, the real joy of a Hermès store is its window display, dedicated as it is to pleasing the passer-by. The Mumbai iteration has been created by production designer Aradhana Seth (Fire, Earth, The Darjeeling Limited, Angry Indian Goddesses, The Sky is Pink), who uses the dots and lines of Gond art to create horses, giraffes, monkeys, sea creatures, and birds, out of papier-mâché, terracotta, and wood. Seth tells STIR, “For me, designing a Hermès window is about storytelling. Hermès' silk prints have beautiful illustrations of animals and plants. So, I wanted to transform the Faubourg into an enchanted forest, where every tree and creature whispered tales of magic, and the abstract forms merged with geometric forms. When Hermès approached me, I thought of Gond art because there is so much nature, patterns and a storytelling narrative overlap with it. The window with the Faubourg is largely in fawn with the Hermès orange as highlights mixed in with green trees and pops of colour such as the apples and the fish, crabs, and seashells. [To show the merchandise], we have a tie snake that climbs the tree trunk and a watch that sits in a conch. In some ways, this collaborative approach with Gond artists is similar to The Darjeeling Limited (2007), where we collaborated with truck, signage, stencil and miniature artists to paint the exterior and interior of the train.”

In the latest Le Monde d'Hermès, the house’s biannual magazine, there’s a sentence that describes its flagship in Faubourg: “The impression is more bazaar than concept store.” This is the link Hermès has maintained over the years: what’s true for its oldest store in Paris is also true for its latest store in Mumbai.