When one mentions the word Hermès, the pictures of the infamous Birkin and Kelly are the first things that conjure up synonymously in one’s mind. Unbeknownst to some, the iconic bag wasn’t Hermès’ first creation. One doesn’t need to look much further than the company’s emblem to seek out its heritage and origin. A man, a Duc carriage and his horse.

Fittingly, Jean-Louis Dumas has stated “Our first client is the horse, the second, the horseman!”. The company was founded by Thierry Hermès in 1837 as a workshop creating saddlery and harnesses for the countries’ highest echelons of society. In 1880, his son Charles-Émile took over the reigns of the business and moved the workshop to 24 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris, where it still stands today. The fame of this saddlery took Hermès across the world from the upper class and aristocracy of Europe all the way to the Americas, North Africa and Asia.

Émile-Maurice created the first Hermès bag — the Haut à Courroies (HAC) in 1892, an inspiration from the totes carried by Argentinian cowboys during his travels to South America. The HAC was a bag meant for riders to carry and protect their saddles and riding boots, before the time of the automobile.

In 1922, Émile-Maurice designed the first Hermès ladies’ handbag based on the HAC to respond to his wife’s complaints about finding the perfect handbag. The HAC still remains today, as the Birkin HAC edition, and comes in different sizes than the Birkin.

In 1923, the first ladies bag named as the “sac pour l’auto”, based on the “Haut à Courroies”, was created especially for the wife of Ettori Bugatti, the automobile maker, and was also named “Torpedo No 1” or the “Bugatti”. The “sac pour l’auto” was for top drivers and long distance travellers using the zipper patented by Émile-Maurice. The bag was made with a round-angled shape to enable easy access for the carrier. Today, the “sac pour l’auto” is better known as the Hermès Bolide and was redesigned for the modern woman in 1982. A more minimalistic version, the Bolide 1923, inspired by the year the Bolide was created, is also available today.

In the 1930s, Robert Dumas re-designed the “sac pour l’auto” and created the “Sac à dépêches” to make it easier and lighter for ladies to carry. In 1935, the bag was created with a belt. During the filming of Hitchcock’s “To Catch a Thief”, Grace Kelly became enamored with the bag that was used for the movie’s costume design. In 1955, she was seen carrying the bag in various pictures after she was engaged to the Prince, and eventually became Princess of Monaco in 1956. In honor of the princess, and the popularity of the bag due to her influence, the “Sac à dépêches” was later renamed as the “Kelly bag” in 1977. The Kelly bag has been modernized in later years and is one of Hermès’ two most coveted bags.

The infamous Birkin bag was also the creation of Jean-Louis Dumas from an incidental airplane ride in 1984 where he was seated next to Jane Birkin. According to various sources, the contents of her bag spilled out onto the airplane aisle, so Dumas decided to create the perfect travel bag for the young mother’s needs with ample room to hold even a baby’s bottle, and the ability to fold under the airplane seat. Today, the Birkin is one of the house’s most iconic symbols and has recently been the world’s most expensive bag ever sold in auction.

The Constance, Hermès’ more contemporary child, is the namesake of the daughter of its designer, Catherine Chaillet. Both were born in 1967. “Constance” displays the perfect play on words that embodies Hermès’ values of perseverance and consistency. The Constance has been aptly named as it is beautifully constructed and is undoubtedly the quintessential every day bag that one can always count on.

The appeal of the Hermès bag is unparalleled. Each handbag takes a single craftsman between 12-40 hours to create. The process of creation is so personalized such that each craftsman receives his or her own set of tools during their tenure at the house. With such nurtured and treasured generations of artisans, there is no doubt that further iconic handbags will see rise in the future of the house.