There is a version of a luxury flagship that works entirely as spectacle. Big, impressive, somewhere you photograph and then leave. Hermès Maison Bond Street, which opened on 16 June at 166 New Bond Street, is not that. It is the kind of place you want to spend time in, which, if you know anything about how people actually experience retail, is considerably harder to pull off than it sounds.
Hermès bought 166 New Bond Street in 2009 for £73 million, at the time one of the highest prices ever paid for a property on the street. It took seventeen years to open. In an industry that prizes fast moves and seasonal newness above most things, seventeen years of preparation reads as a philosophical position. The result is a store that feels permanent in the best sense of the word.
What it actually is
Six interconnected buildings, five floors, 55 rooms, four staircases and a series of rooftop terraces, bringing all 16 of Hermès’ métiers under one roof in London for the first time. The buildings date from 1769 and were previously home to British jeweller Asprey, a warren of Georgian townhouses that Hermès has carefully preserved while threading something entirely new through the interiors.
The architect is Denis Montel of Paris-based RDAI, who has worked with Hermès on its major stores for years. Visitors enter through a seven-metre-high façade into a grand hall where the ex-libris motif is set into the Faubourg-patterned floor. The first floor holds leather goods, homeware, equestrian collections, watches and jewellery, finished with patinated copper panels, oak parquet and horsehair marquetry alongside intimate salons and private lounges.
Upstairs, women’s ready-to-wear and shoes occupy rooms with soft pink mineral mortar walls, floral carpets and restored nineteenth-century mosaic floors. Menswear sits across the corridor in reclaimed oak and deep-blue Victorian-inspired wall coverings. Each métier has its own colour story drawn from British architectural history: salmon and peach for womenswear, marine blue for menswear. The effect is less a single consistent interior and more a series of distinct rooms with their own character, which is both a nod to the building’s original warren-like layout and a genuinely pleasant way to move through a space.
The art
More than 500 works have been installed throughout the Maison under the supervision of artistic director Pierre-Alexis Dumas. A newly commissioned horse sculpture by British artist Jessica Wetherly stands at the centre of the atrium. London illustrator Katie Scott created bespoke wall artworks for the beauty, fragrance and fashion jewellery spaces. Commissioning London artists for a London store rather than importing a universal visual language says something about how seriously the house took the idea of actually belonging here. This is not art as decoration.
Why it matters
The opening closes both the former flagship at 155 New Bond Street, which Hermès had operated since 1975, and the brand’s Selfridges concession, bringing the entire London presence into one address for the first time. For anyone who knew 155, the scale is a genuine shock. The old store was beautiful and relatively intimate. This is not comparable.
The more interesting question is what a store like this says about where luxury retail is going. The instinct in 2026 is clearly towards space, privacy and a strong sense of place rather than transactional speed. Hermès Maison Bond Street may be the fullest expression of that anywhere right now. Private rooms for appointments, a café, rooftop terraces, and a floor where Hermès artisans carry out repairs and refurbishments in full view of visitors. That last detail is the telling one. Watching someone work on a leather good with actual tools and skill is not something you can replicate online. It makes visible what the brand is actually built on.
Pierre-Alexis Dumas described the Maison as an homage to British culture, noting that the reference for elegance and craftsmanship in the equestrian tradition has always been British, and that his grandfather used to say Hermès was the most British of the French brands. That is either a very good line or a genuinely felt conviction. Seventeen years of preparation suggests the latter.
Now the largest Hermès store in Europe, Maison Bond Street is a significant act of confidence in London from a city that has had a complicated few years in luxury retail. Worth visiting regardless of your budget.
