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Hermes Pays the Highest Rent on NYC’s Madison Avenue

What’s that you say? The world’s most expensive and exclusive handbags have the most expensive luxury retail address on Madison Avenue at which to rest their rarified haunches in anticipation of being scooped up by the world’s elite? Preposterous.

Ok, so it’s not exactly shocking that the Hermes flagship boutique at the corner of Madison Avenue and 62nd Street, smack in the middle of Manhattan’s toniest retail district, pays the most rent per square foot of space on the famed avenue. What’s shocking is the number: over $1,700 per square foot for a space in excess of 30,000 square feet.

After some quick math (and the movement of a lot of zeroes), I’m here to tell you that the number on Hermes’ NYC rent check is over $51,000,000 for the 10-year extension that the brand just signed to continue residing in the three-story space, which houses a single building that is entirely occupied by Hermes. That’s a new record for Madison Avenue, although the New York Post reports that new buildings under development will demand as much as $2,200 per square foot on the street, and that buildings in Times Square or on 5th Avenue in the 50s sometimes rent for as much as $2,500 per square foot.

When you consider how much product a retail business has to move to make rents like this sustainable, you get a real picture of how the fashion industry affects the economy, both at a local New York level and at a national level. Our purchasing power is real, ladies and gents.

(If you’d like to use some of that purchasing power on the beautiful Birkin above, you can pick it up for $64,500 via Moda Operandi.)

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