We all know by now that vintage is the “new luxury,” with prices for everything from secondhand band T-shirts and worn-out denim to archival designer pieces going through the roof. The latest item to be swept up in the trend is silver Hermès jewelry, particularly pieces made between 1930 and 1960. Bracelets are by far the biggest business, with prices ranging from around $2,300 to $17,000, depending on the style.
“When I receive an item, it’s sold instantly,” says Damien Robardey, a young Parisian who sells jewelry on Instagram as @studio_silvery_, adding that prices have been climbing since January. “It all started two or three years ago,” he adds, “and now it’s at its highest point.”
Technically, the market for vintage Hermès jewelry has existed for decades through auction houses and websites such as 1stDibs, where bracelets are listed for well into the thousands of dollars. This new market is more peer-to-peer. Instagram allows sellers and collectors to connect across the world, forming a thriving backchannel for direct sales.
Sellers are reluctant to reveal the inner workings of the industry, unwilling to disclose their sourcing techniques or their carefully cultivated collector networks. But they will say that the bag boom started it all. In the past couple of years, Hermès handbags have sold for astronomical prices, including a Himalaya Birkin bag listed for $175,000. People desperate to get their hands on one have even filed lawsuits to try to force the brand to sell to them.
“When you have money, you will pay whatever the price is,” says Laurent Kaus who runs Boutique Symbolique in Paris and has sold to customers in France, the United States, and England. “That’s happening again with the jewelry. The customers who are buying the bracelets for crazy prices have already bought the handbags.”
“I think the interest in Hermès corresponds to a need for legitimacy,” Kaus adds. “Each product stamped by Hermès is automatically seen as high-quality.”
Often, collectors are looking for certain elements in a piece. Gauthier Borsarello — co-founder of L’Etiquette Magazine, creative director of Fursac, and a kind of overarching savant in Paris’ vintage scene — is particularly interested in the work of Gaétan de Percin, a legendary jeweller who began working with Hermès in 1938. “I collect his pieces, signed Hermès or not,” Borsarello says. “It’s the creativity in the chains and the closure of his bracelets. They’re always extremely well made.”
Robardey lists other makers who command particular interest, including the Swiss label Gay Frères, which has a long history of working with Hermès, and French jeweller Georges L’Enfant. Popularity, he says, is “mostly about shape,” chief among them the Chaine d’Ancre, a motif that Hermès has used since the 1930s, and the Acrobat Bracelet, which is made up of thick, chunky links. “The pieces that sell for a very high price are the classics of the brand, produced before the 1960s,” Kaus says. “I’ve had very interesting pieces that you don’t see very often, marked Hermes, pretty old, but they don’t want them. They just focus on the traditional ones.”
Pieces without rhodium plating are also particularly desirable. Hermès began using the metal on its silver jewelry in the late 1980s, decades after it gained popularity on rose gold, to reduce the silver’s oxidisation. “If it’s made with rhodium, they really don’t want it,” Kaus says.
Kaus and Robardey say one market in particular is driving this new interest in vintage Hermès jewelry: Japan. Borsarello attributes this to the country’s already strong vintage market. “People in Japan are the first to discover this, dig into the history, pick the best pieces, and stock up,” he says. “At some point, people here will realise how good it is, and it will be too late. Everything will already be in private collections.”
Japan also has a network of established sellers, as well as more traditional vintage retail that showcases Hermès jewelry. Amore, for example, is a group of four vintage stores across Tokyo that carry a wide range of Hermès bracelets and watches. Kaus mainly sells to Japanese retailers. “The customers in Japan will never contact me,” he says. “They want to go to the showroom or the shop in Japan and buy the bracelet, even if it’s more expensive.”
For now, the trend is still relatively niche. “At the moment there are not a lot of people who are interested in it,” Robardey says. “When a lot of people know about it, when a lot of sellers enter the game, it will crash.”
For Kaus, the next step in the market’s evolution will be looking deeper than the biggest names. As collectors in Japan and Europe deepen their interest and knowledge in Hérmes jewelry, their focus will shift to other designers, makers, and craftspeople — those who worked behind the scenes and those who worked for other houses, including Gay Frères and Georges L’Enfant as well as de Percin.
For instance, right now, Gaétan de Percin’s designs don’t fetch nearly the same price as those stamped Hermès, “But now those prices have started to go up as well,” Kaus says. “You need stock for business to happen. If it’s too rare, nothing will happen.” But in the case of de Percin and other designers, “lots of pieces were made, so it’s easier to find. Then business can happen, and prices can go slowly up.”
Until the market does collapse, though, expect prices for those Chaine d’Ancre and Acrobat bracelets to keep rising. It’s probably time to set an Instagram alert for Gaétan de Percin.
