From Thierry Hermès' stables to international auctions, a journey through the object that redefined the concept of accessory
Ninety by ninety centimeters. Hand-rolled edges, one by one, by artisans who dedicate years to perfecting that single gesture. Twill silk of such high quality that it takes up to eighteen months to produce a single design. The Hermès carré is not a simple scarf: it is an image, an eikón, an icon.
But how does something become the most recognizable, most collected, and most desired fashion object of the twentieth century? The answer, as often happens in great stories, begins much earlier than one might imagine.
Thierry Hermès and the legacy of the saddle
It all began in 1837 in Paris, when Thierry Hermès opened a saddlery in the heart of the city. His craft was noble and precise: to create harness for horses destined for European aristocratic families. The quality was absolute, the clientele was exclusive, and the reputation grew silently for decades.
It was only in 1937, exactly a century after its founding, that the maison presented its first silk carré. It was called Jeu des Omnibus et Dames Blanches, and it was designed by Robert Dumas, son-in-law of Émile-Maurice Hermès and the man who, more than anyone else, would transform a silk square into an institution. It was an object unlike anything else on the market: not jewelry, not clothing, not a simple accessory. It was something new: a printed fabric square that carried all the artisanal precision of the saddlery, transferred to a completely different material.
The success was immediate. And it has never stopped.
An unparalleled visual archive
In almost ninety years of production, Hermès has created over fifty thousand different designs for its carré. Fifty thousand compositions, each commissioned to an artist, each printed with a screen-printing technique that can require up to forty-six separate color passages. Each passage is manual. Each color is specially mixed. Every carré produced is, technically, a work of applied art.
The subjects change with the eras and tell the story of the world through the eyes of the maison: equestrian and carriages in the 1940s and 1950s, botany and zoology in the 1960s, geometries and abstractions in the 1970s, up to collaborations with contemporary artists in recent decades. Collecting vintage Hermès carrés means building a visual archive of twentieth-century culture filtered through a precise, aristocratic, unmistakable gaze.
The vintage carré market
Today, a vintage Hermès carré in perfect condition can be worth from a few hundred to several thousand euros, depending on the era, design, and rarity. The most sought-after pieces, those signed by famous artists, those produced in limited editions, those belonging to well-known collectors, reach significant auction prices.
But the value of the vintage Hermès carré is not just economic. It is the value of an object that has withstood time without yielding to wear, that has survived decades of trends remaining always recognizable, always desirable, always current. It is the most eloquent demonstration of what quality means in the deepest sense of the term.
When the carré becomes something else
There is a moment, in the life of certain designer scarves, when their story takes an unexpected turn. They don't end up in a drawer, they are not framed, they don't disappear into an archive. They are transformed.
That's what we do at MM33: we take vintage Hermès carrés, along with designer scarves from Dior, Chanel, and Yves Saint Laurent, and transform them into unique handcrafted bags. Not because the scarf wasn't enough on its own, but because that extraordinary silk, that dense visual history, deserves to be carried into the world every day, not kept safe from light.
The carré becomes a bag. The story continues.
Explore the One of a Kind MM33 pieces made from original vintage designer scarves. Each available piece exists only once.