In fashion, we often say that there is Hermès, and then there is everyone else. The 186-year-old firm doesn’t play by the rules of luxury, it makes them—setting standards in terms of pricing, distribution, and quality, etcetera. Hermès famously doesn’t have a marketing department or hire celebrities to front its advertising campaigns. Hermès also refuses to charge what the market would bear for its priciest handbags. That’s a pointed tactic that has nestled the company, controlled by the same family for six generations, in the good graces of consumers while still profiting handsomely. Hermès made about $15 billion in 2023, which is peanuts compared to LVMH’s $86 billion, but it had a comparatively advantaged 43.49 percent operating profit compared to LVMH’s 26.5 percent. This spread explains, in part, how its $244 billion market cap is around 75 percent of LVMH’s own $329 billion valuation. Since Hermès does what it wants, my interest was piqued when I heard recently that the company was plotting an expansion into a category historically devoid of new entrants: couture. According to multiple sources inside the company, womenswear designer Nadège Vanhee has been quietly working on the concept, with the possibility of a 2027 launch. When I inquired, a representative for Hermès provided a simple response: “Maybe someday.” The statement was consistent with C.E.O., and sixth generation-heir, Axel Dumas’ comment to the Financial Times several months ago. “We could do couture,” he demurred. “We don’t rule it out.” When I heard the news, I wondered if Hermès viewed a couture collection partly as an employee retention tool. Vanhee’s name was bandied about in the Chanel conversation, and the appointment of Matthieu Blazy as “artistic director of fashion activities” made me think that Vanhee was perhaps considered, even if it seemed like an unlikely match. (To be clear, I don’t know if a call was actually made.) People don’t leave Hermès—and when they do, they are usually fired. But for a serious designer, Chanel couture is the apex. In the end, though, my sense from talking to people around Hermès is that couture was a worthy flier—a true why not situation—for a quarter-trillion market cap company. Of course, developing a couture collection would require a substantial initial investment, likely in the tens of millions of dollars. Couture, after all, is not simply custom designs: Every individual piece must satisfy the requirements established by the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, the governing body. There will have to be a new studio established, with new, highly skilled workers—poached, no doubt, from top competitors. Many European fashion houses that are approved to show couture by the Chambre Syndicale don’t even bother on account of the expense.