For our first edition, StudioXAG was invited behind the scenes at Hermès Maison London for a private tour of the brand’s new British home. With no photography allowed during our visit, the Maison retains a certain mystery. Consider this your insider’s guide to one of this year’s most anticipated new spaces.
It’s 10am on an unexpectedly warm Tuesday morning in September and a queue has begun to form outside Hermès New Bond Street. Above us hangs a blue plaque for Sir Henry Irving, the Victorian actor who once lived here.
High atop the façade, a monumental figure on horseback looks down over our heads. He is L’Artificier, Hermès’ fireworks-maker: a rider holding two orange silk scarves aloft, their colour flashing against the pastel sky. First created for the house’s 150th anniversary in 1987, the figure has become a familiar rooftop emblem at Hermès Maisons around the world.
From street level, the windows offer a more intimate version of the same world. In one, a hand-stitched quilt recreates the storefront, parting down the middle to reveal fragments of product: the corner of a lamp, a sofa, the flash of a shoe. Through its quilted “windows”, small apertures offer glimpses of rooms beyond.
These imaginative flourishes are the first clues to the Maison’s particular proposition. Opened in June 2026, the 55-room building is not designed to hurry visitors towards a purchase. It’s a high-touch experience: a house of craft, repair, art and hospitality. Our tour is more like a detour; the luxury lies as much in the time spent discovering the world as in the objects eventually taken home.
The Maison brings six former Grade II-listed houses together in one labyrinthine journey. This patchwork of buildings lends itself to getting lost, something Hermès has wholeheartedly leaned into.
From the central courtyard, the building breaks apart into a sequence of rooms, landings, corridors and staircases, each with its own distinct identity. Rather than the streamlined clarity of a conventional flagship, the Maison has the logic of an old London house: rooms reveal themselves randomly, routes double back and it’s entirely possible to lose sense of where you are. We heard that regular visitors still get lost, sometimes returning to make sure they’ve not missed a room.
During our visit, we learned that its design draws on the story of Alice in Wonderland: discovery as a kind of falling down the rabbit hole, with every turn offering a new proportion, material, colour or object. There are rooms that resemble galleries, some that feel like richly furnished apartments, and others with the vibe of a private members’ club.
It’s the antithesis of conventional retail. Most stores are designed to be understood instantly: a clear view across the floor, an intuitive journey, a clear product hierarchy. Here, unexpected routes become part of the pleasure; an invitation to take the long way round.
At the heart of the Maison sits the former outdoor courtyard, now enclosed beneath a glass roof and centred around Norman Foster’s sweeping spiral staircase. Look upwards and the backs of the old houses are still legible.
Around the courtyard, Hermès has curated a family of antique shop signs. There’s an 18th-century bicycle-shop sign, a vintage metal banner from a blacksmith and a series of horseshoes arranged in tribute to Saint Eligius, the patron saint of goldsmiths, silversmiths and blacksmiths.
Hermès began as a harness-maker, and its world still expands through the culture of skilled hands: leatherworkers, saddle-makers, carpenters, textile makers, illustrators, glassmakers and engineers. Together, these antique signs act as physical symbols of this myriad of trades united under one house.
More than 500 artworks have also been selected for the Maison, many from the Émile Hermès Collection: a vast archive of objects, artworks and curiosities assembled by the third-generation leader who helped transform Hermès into a global luxury brand. Émile was an obsessive collector, and that impulse remains palpable here.
Above the public rooms, a private fourth floor is dedicated to the Émile Hermès Collection, with terraced gardens beyond. Most visitors will never reach it, but its presence makes clear that this isn’t only somewhere to sell objects, it’s also somewhere for the house to draw inspiration from its own archive.
This is Hermès’ sixth Maison, joining Paris, New York City, Tokyo, Seoul and Shanghai. Yet its significance isn’t simply its scale. All 16 métiers were represented in the previous London store; what has changed is the depth with which they can now be experienced.
The Maison gives each métier more room to express its own character. Beauty, fragrance, jewellery, watches, menswear, womenswear, silks, leather, equestrian, home and the wider universe of objects aren’t squashed together. They unfold room by room, each given its own atmosphere and personality.
One side of the building is formed from a spectacular wall of 10,837 handmade Murano glass bricks. Noticeably, it stops short of the ceiling by several rows. When asked about the gap, Hermès explained that the wall is a numerical nod to its founding year, 1837. It was left deliberately incomplete because the team liked the detail.
In this world, narrative matters more than visual perfection.
In the equestrian room, horsehair and wood marquetry connect the material language of the space to Hermès’ origins. Menswear is wrapped in moody, embossed navy Lincrusta wallcovering. In beauty and fragrance, bespoke botanical wallcoverings by British illustrator Katie Scott bring an English garden sensibility, one that feels particularly fitting in a country with a near-obsessive relationship with gardening.
But Hermès knows when to puncture the grandeur. The bathrooms, painted in an almost luminescent neon pink, are a reference to a scene from Mr Bean.
On an appointment-only upper floor, Atelier Horizons presents the house’s bespoke-creation programme: a place for ideas that go beyond the standard catalogue. The atelier works from an open brief – think a bicycle, surfboard or DJ booth – and translates a client’s concept into an individually made, functional object through specialist craft.
Some of these objects can take up to eight years to complete. If a commission calls for unfamiliar expertise, its craftspeople will seek out the relevant specialist skill before making it.
Its neighbouring space is an active aftercare workshop, where artisans service and repair Hermès products. This builds a more durable form of value: attention before, during and long after purchase.
During the restoration, the team discovered an antique mosaic beneath the old flooring. Every piece was removed, polished and relaid in the exact same position. The discovery feels like architectural kismet. Mosaic is integral to the Hermès material world, with each of its stores featuring a distinctive version; at this Maison, one was already there, waiting to be uncovered.
A restored Victorian lift, technically operational but awaiting a specialist operator before it can return to daily use, offers a small but telling symbol of that approach. Hermès chose not to replace it with a more straightforward contemporary alternative. Instead, it sought out the rare expertise needed to restore it to its former glory.
Hermès describes London as a “lighthouse”: a city where people from across Europe, the Middle East and the Americas have long stopped before continuing their journeys elsewhere. The new Maison gives those travellers a more complete place to encounter the house.
There are 55 rooms to enter, four staircases to follow, three elevators, two roof terraces and more than 500 artworks to admire. Rather than presenting luxury as a transaction to close, Hermès treats it as a relationship to deepen. It’s an invitation to spend time: to get lost, encounter something unexpected, return to a room and see it differently, or entrust an object to someone who knows how to care for it.
Hermès Maison London is more than a new luxury flagship. It’s an argument for taking the scenic route.
