Hermes will celebrate the academic legacy of Princeton, N.J., when it opens the doors to its newest boutique in the upscale community on April 26.
The shop, Hermes’s 36th in the U.S., is located in a brick corner building in the heart of Palmer Square, the town’s main shopping district, and is the brand’s third store in the state. The others are located in the American Dream and Short Hills malls and while the Princeton unit is slightly small, according to Hermes’s U.S. president Diane Mahady, it is distinct because it is freestanding and in an historic building.
“It was challenging due to the historic constraints of the building itself,” she said, noting that the store was “three years in the making, but our team created a beautiful little jewel.”
The store was designed by the Parisian architecture agency RDAI and was inspired by the local academic culture. Mahady said libraries were an inspiration to the team which incorporated books into the design “in an abstract way.”
The store features a line of bow windows and the main entrance evokes a residential feel, showcasing women’s and men’s silk pieces along with perfume and beauty products that sit alongside fashion jewelry. From there, a series of small salons highlight each of the brand’s 16 métiers. There are stairs leading up to the equestrian display, which is next to the home department, and to the jewelry and watches area that are housed in an all-wooden salon.
Seven small passageways, lacquered in a deep green, transect the store and are intended to guide customers from one side of the store to the other, passing through either the leather goods area or the men’s and women’s ready-to-wear, which are merchandised with textured softwood walls that are intended to be reminiscent of bound paper pages.
Its palette of deep blue-greens and autumnal reds complement the wood shelves and herringbone floors. Carpets woven in a graphic, striped composition of color, like a stack of books, delineate each métier at the rear of the store. There is furniture, including sofas and chairs, along with a Faubourg mosaic and Grecques lighting, fitting rooms and a private salon.
The artwork offers humor and equestrian themes and includes contemporary works, such as American artist Evan Hecox’s colorful graphic, a tribute to 24 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré and an oil painting by the French painter Maurice Taquoy from the Émile Hermès collection.
To celebrate this opening, American artist Ruby Wescoat reinterpreted Princeton’s scholastic legacy through a special window installation featuring crows, displaying their naturally dark feathers reminiscent of formal academic attire, that are engaged in scientific experiments.
Mahady said because a lot of space in the store is devoted to back-of-house requirements and is not customer facing, Hermes was able to donate one of its windows to the Princeton Art Museum which will use it to display some of its works on a rotating basis as it prepares to open a new building in 2025.
Mahady said she expects the store to attract a young, international client as well as local residents who have had to travel to shop Hermes up until now. “People would go to Philadelphia or New York, but now we’re giving them the opportunity to shop locally.”
To introduce the store to the community, Hermes hosted a dinner Wednesday night at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study before opening the store by appointment on Thursday to existing customers who were invited for a sneak peek before it opens to the general public on Friday.
This is the first new location Hermes will open this year, Mahady said. The only other project is the relocation of its Atlanta unit from the Shops at Buckhead to the luxury wing at Phipps Plaza. That move, which is expected to be completed by the end of October, will allow the company to build out its ready-to-wear and fine jewelry offerings, she said.
In sharp contrast to other luxury specialists such as Kering and LVMH whose most recent results were up 3 percent and down 10 percent respectively in the first quarter, Hermes on Thursday reported that its overall revenues increased 17 percent in the period with jewelry and home products jumping nearly 25 percent.
