Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Louis Dumas Dies At 72 A business spokeswoman
Louis Dumas Dies At 72
A business spokeswoman, confirming the death, offered no facts on the result in, but Mr. Dumas had had Parkinson s disease for a number of years.
Mr. Dumas assumed leadership of Hermes in 1978, at a low point inside the corporation s fortunes. Founded in 1837 by Thierry Hermes as a harness maker, it had diversified to include things like clothes, jewelry and accessories by the 1920s. Even though its Kelly bags and signature square scarves was fashion must-haves, the business was languishing, hobbled by its fusty image.
Having a free, often audacious hand, Mr. Dumas began shaking points up. He hired exciting new designers, extended the firm s lines, expanded internationally and invested in corporations like the glassware maker Classic Hermes Replica Handbags Saint-Louis, the tableware organization Puiforcat and also the style residence of Jean Paul Gaultier.
Inside a characteristic bit of opportunism, he turned a likelihood encounter using the English actress Jane Birkin into a single of Hermes s most significant successes. Seated subsequent to Ms. Birkin on a Paris-to-London flight in 1984, he started asking her about her tattered straw handbags and after that invited her to work with Hermes to create a brand new handbag style.
The oversize Birkin bag, with its distinctive locking clasp, soon rivaled the Kelly bag as an object of need for fashionable girls worldwide, who had been undeterred by prices that now start off at $7,500 for the humblest version.
In 1978 Hermes had income of about $50 million. By 1990 the figure had risen to $460 million. Last year the company, with about 300 shops worldwide, reported revenue of about $2.5 billion.
Jean-Louis Robert Frederic Dumas, who also utilized the last name Dumas-Hermes, was born on Feb. two, 1938, in Paris. His father, Robert, had married one from the 4 daughters of Emile-Maurice Hermes, a grandson of Thierry, and would come to be chief executive on the enterprise in 1951.
Soon after attending the Institut d Etudes Politiques de Paris, better known as Sciences Po, Mr. Dumas traveled to Scandinavia and Czechoslovakia playing drums having a jazz ensemble, then performed his compulsory military service in Algeria.
He entered the buyer-training program at Bloomingdale s in New York in 1963, a year after marrying Rena Gregoriades, an architect who would later style the Hermes retailers. She died in 2009.
He's survived by their two kids, Sandrine, a film actress, and Pierre-Alexis, the artistic director of Hermes.
Mr. Dumas joined Hermes in 1964 and, immediately after becoming chairman when his father died in 1978, embarked on an ambitious plan of modernization and expansion, extending the corporation s reaches into the Usa and Asia.
Below designers like Eric Bergere and Bernard Sanz, the company started shedding its equestrian image with python motorcycle jackets and ostrich-skin jeans. Mr. Dumas showed great flair in hiring new talent.
Veronique Nichanian, previously with all the Italian couturier Nino Cerruti, took over males s ready-to-wear in 1988, and in 1997 the Belgian iconoclast Martin Margiela was brought in to style girls s wear. When Mr. Margiela left in 2003, he was succeeded by the even more shocking Mr. Gaultier. The move raised eyebrows all through Hermes Belts Hermes Wallet Replica the style globe but paid off in elevated sales.
Mr. Dumas aggressively opened new Hermes shops abroad, planting the enterprise flag on Madison Avenue in 2000. At the same time, he closed franchises.
As well as Puiforcat and Saint-Louis, he produced alliances with other luxury firms, investing inside the German camera enterprise Leica and obtaining the name rights for the London shoemaker John Lobb.
In 1993 he took the organization public. Practically three-quarters of its shares stay in loved ones hands, creating Hermes, as well as Chanel handbags, a single in the few great luxury brands which can be still family-controlled.
Mr. Dumas, who retired in 2006 as a result of ill wellness, normally carried an old Leica with him, taking photos constantly. In 2008, Steidl published a collection of his photographs: Jean-Louis Dumas: Photographer.
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