Picture this meet-cute: You're walking down the street when your tote bag somehow snaps in half. An Hermès store manager rushes in out of nowhere, picks up the contents of your purse, and replaces it with a red Hermès Mini Kelly bag. It sounds like the plot of a movie, but in fact, it was the plot of a musical extravaganza that took place—for one night only!—at the new Hermès flagship at 706 Madison Avenue, to celebrate the store’s opening.
American designers like Tory Burch, Saturday Night Live comedians like Chloe Fineman, and Snoop Dog BFF bracelet holders like Martha Stewart—along with many of Hermès’s top clientele and the entirety of the city’s fashion media population—gathered at the Hermès store last night for a party that shut down a large chunk of Madison Avenue.
Many blocks were fenced off, not just to allow guests to enjoy snacks from a batch of food truck pop-ups from iconic New York restaurants like Katz’s and Junior’s, but also to allow them to experience the monumental Hermès move quite literally.
After witnessing Act I of Hermès’s play Love on the Block (in which actors sang about wrapping orange Hermès boxes while dancing amongst the new store’s offerings of clothing, accessories, furniture, and homewares), guests were instructed to head outside for Act II, and then across the street for the final Act at the old Hermès location, whose empty shelves and floors were turned into what felt like a bumping red Hermès nightclub. One fashion editor could be overheard declaring, “This feels like the inside of an Hermès box!” It did!
The fate of the Hermès store manager and his beau then played out amongst strobe lights and passed pomegranate wine spritzers. Aside from everyone talking about how much fun they were having while eating caviar on tiny blinis, the party chatter focused on the new flagship. If the old store felt like the world’s most beautiful box, the new flagship felt more like a Birkin, with every corner precisely made.
The French luxury house’s new home at 706 Madison Avenue consists of 20,250-square-feet spread across four floors, the final of which opens to a rooftop garden. The store is actually comprised of a series of salons, much like the rooms of a house—the house of Hermès, if you will. Denis Montel, artistic and general director of the architecture agency RDAI, which was behind the project, said in a press release, “This project was almost like designing five stores into one, while always keeping a bespoke approach. There are many stories, but they are linked together. You go from one surprise to another.”
Much like at the party, there’s a surprise revealed at every corner of 706 Madison Avenue. There’s speckled terrazzo floors illuminated by traditional Grecques lights shaped like art deco skyscrapers, a cocktail bar under a massive skylight surrounded by rare Hermès bags on display, and a smooth, curved stone staircase running up the store along a 49-foot-high wall that acts like a vertical gallery with paintings by Antoine Carbonne and equine themed photographs. There’s even a VIP lounge and a fifth-floor atelier for five artisans-in-residence from different métiers.
If you break your tote bag outside the store once it opens on October 3, will the manager rush out to offer you a Mini Kelly? Not quite. But entering the boutique will at least allow you to experience an entirely different kind of New York story, which actually feels a little bit like Paris on the Upper East Side.
Tara Gonzalez is the Senior Fashion Editor at Harper’s Bazaar. Previously, she was the style writer at InStyle, founding commerce editor at Glamour, and fashion editor at Coveteur.
