
Hermès has landed in Music City.
The French luxury house on Thursday will open its first store in Nashville. The two-story unit is located in the up-and-coming Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood in a red brick building that formerly housed a hosiery factory. The facade of the building was retained, with the name of the brand now painted discreetly on the brick as well as awnings that were added to the top-floor windows.
The store, which sports an open floor plan and an abundance of natural light, will offer the entire range of Hermès apparel, leather goods, jewelry and shoes for men and women. The first floor features the house’s famous silks, along with fashion jewelry, perfume, beauty and home products on the left and center, and equestrian and leather goods on the right. The second floor showcases men’s and women’s ready-to-wear and shoes, jewelry and a salon dedicated to watches.
Like it does in all of its 43 U.S. stores, the Nashville unit was designed to pay homage to the local community, as evidenced by the custom electric guitar that was created for the store by the company’s Parisian artisans from ebony, walnut and leather. There are also special Arceau watches featuring a music-inspired On Air carre illustration by French artist Carine Brancowitz.
The custom guitar created for the Hermès Nashville store.
Courtesy of Hermes
References to music are found throughout the store with multicolored metal panels that evoke the buttons of a mixing desk and lacquered wood paneling in the leather goods area designed to resemble the bellows of an accordion. The steps of the terrazzo staircase are intended to look like white piano keys while the jewelry area features a metal mesh backdrop similar to the comb on the mouthpiece of a harmonica.
The store, which was designed by the Paris-based architectural agency RDAI, also features a selection of artworks from the Emile Hermès collection and the Hermès Collection of Contemporary Photographs.
To commemorate the opening, Nashville-based artist Herb Williams created a collection of 3D objects for the windows constructed from colorful crayons. The display features a larger-than-life horse sculpture trotting through birch trees created from piano keys.
Although the Nashville metropolitan area is home to more than 2 million people, it was still a city in which Hermès had long hoped to open a store.
“We’ve seen a lot of really interesting demographic shifts,” said Diane Mahady, president of Hermès America. “I think that where we continue to open stores might surprise people.”
That started when the company opened in Princeton, N.J., last year. “That seemed a little strange,” she admitted. “But our strategy on retail is not one-size-fits-all. We go to the individual markets where we think it makes sense.”
Even though the company renovated its Atlanta store last year, Hermès considers the Southeast to be “underserved,” Mahady said. So adding a unit in Nashville was the next logical move. “We’ve always had our eye on Nashville. We finally found the right location and the right timing,” she said.
“We love the location; the store is absolutely beautiful,” she added. “It’s in an old hosiery mill so it sort of speaks to the industrial past of Nashville. We’re not downtown, we’re not at the mall, and the store itself will be an expression of the community.”
She pointed to all the subtle musical references within the design as one of the reasons it will be distinct and she expects those Easter eggs to connect with the “vibrant” community in the city.
Hermès is one of the only retail stores in the Wedgewood-Houston area, which is also home to Soho House and a lot of local and nationally known restaurants. “We like to lean into lifestyle areas,” Mahady explained, “where people go to relax and hang out. So we feel it’s a good location for us since we tend to be a destination. When our longtime clients come in, we prefer not to be in a high-traffic area so we can really preserve the quality of the experience.”
She said the mix in the store will be pretty much identical to that in the other Hermès units — with the exception of the pieces created especially for this one, such as the watch and the guitar.
“By definition, all of our stores carry all 16 metiers, but we do have a couple of exclusive products that we made for Nashville,” she said. She pointed to the one-of-a-kind guitar that was based on a saddle tree “that we couldn’t resist. It’s such a special and unique piece that leaned into the spirit of Nashville.”
Hermès traces its history to 1837 as a harness workshop for European noblemen, and today, the company still has a healthy equestrian business. The Nashville store is in the heart of Tennessee horse country and will offer equestrian riding gear, saddles and other products, but not western saddles. “They’re a different construction,” Malady said. “We do jumping and dressage saddles and we make bridles, saddle pads, blankets and tons of products related to your horse and your barn.”
She said that although it remains to be seen, Hermès expects the store to attract everyone from entrepreneurs and music-industry professionals to well-heeled people from other walks of life. “Nashville attracts a lot of different kind of industries and people now,” she said. “Obviously, the music industry is the backbone, but there are certainly more and more ancillary industries coming in so we’re looking forward to seeing what that brings.”
Nashville is the second store Hermès has opened in just over a month. On Sept. 12, the company debuted its first Arizona boutique in the Scottsdale Fashion Square mall. That store, which is also two stories and offers all 16 metiers, is inspired by the local Sonoran Desert and pays homage to the sunlight and succulents prevalent in the area. It features an indoor facade created from ceramic tiles crafted in Mexico, which are intended to evoke desert cacti.
Mahady said that like Nashville, Scottsdale is also a market where Hermès had long hoped to open a store. “We were just waiting for the right location and opportunity, and they finally came up.”
She said the company hosted an opening-event dinner for 120 people “and all of them were existing clients.” Because there was no store in Arizona, they shopped at Hermès units in Texas, Las Vegas, California or Hawaii, she said, but “are thrilled to be able to have a local store now.”
Mahady said there are no plans to add any more stores for the remainder of this year and declined to say how many units would be added next year, saying the company is in a quiet period in anticipation of its earnings release next week. However in the second quarter, reported in July, the company said sales in the Americas rose 12.3 percent to 760 million euros, driven by double-digit growth in the U.S. By category, leather goods and saddlery were up 14.8 percent in the period, ready-to-wear and accessories up 3.8 percent and silk and textiles up 2.2 percent while perfume and beauty sales were down 7.2 percent and watches were down 5.5 percent, all at current exchange rates.
While unable to discuss business, Mahady said what she was excited about was a special performance that would cap off the opening festivities in Nashville. The company tapped a group of its artisans in France to collaborate on an original song that will be recorded and released as part of the event.
“Our people in France — from the silk workshop, the saddle workshop, the leather goods workshops, who are also musicians — are coming over and we’re cutting a record with them,” she said. “They did an original song, and they flew over to record it at one of the oldest record pressing plants in the country, which is right near our store in Nashville. And they’re going to perform it live.”
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