Hermès Hits Home in Brooklyn

The brand behind the world's most coveted bag just locked down a corner of Williamsburg. After testing the waters in the neighborhood with a pop-up, Hermès has finally found its permanent home, and it's designed like a loft you'd pay any rent to live in.The store opened September 17th at 130 Berry Street, and the corner building is a collage of five different brick façades, a nod to the neighborhood's architecture, wrapped around a courtyard where an American sweetgum tree greets you at the door. Coming in off a busy shopping strip, it feels like an exhale.The ground floor is where you'll spend most of your time: silk, fashion jewelry, shoes, and beauty. Then come the home collections, styled like an actual living room, with walls made of woven leather straps and, yes, baby blue shoelaces.Courtesy of Hermès / Samuel FrostHead up the staircase, a riff on a New York fire escape, and you'll notice even the banister is wrapped in leather. It's the kind of detail the brand is famous for.The store also makes a real effort to feel local rather than just landing in Brooklyn. At the opening, artistic director Pierre-Alexis Dumas said every Hermès store should reflect the culture of the place it's in, a lesson he learned from his father, Jean-Louis Dumas, who also shaped Hermès stores as artistic director prior.You can see it in the details. Williamsburg-based artists contributed to the walls and floors, and the art from the Hermès collections includes a 1985 photo of the Staten Island Ferry and a selection of works exploring the architectural details of early twentieth-century industrial buildings.Courtesy of Hermès / Samuel FrostAnd then there are the windows, my favorite part. Designed by Antoine Platteau, the artist behind the windows at Hermès's Paris flagship, and Brooklyn artist Christina Zimpel, they open onto a vignette you can peer into: a scene of bright colors and characters, women with their Hermès objects and their dogs, who look suspiciously like them. It's a playful reminder that the house doesn’t take itself too seriously, and knows how to have fun.In a moment when luxury retail is trying to figure out what people actually want, Hermès is offering something that feels a little bit like home.Jessica (aka Jess) is a Senior Fashion Editor at Cosmopolitan, working across both fashion market and styling for print stories, as well as digital fashion and commerce coverage. Prior to joining Cosmo, she worked in fashion at Vanity Fair. Jess lives in New York City and loves spotlighting emerging designers you might not have heard of yet—while also being an unabashedly devoted Love Island fan (dating back to Season 1 of Love Island UK, that’s how serious). See more of her work here, and follow her on Instagram if you love her.