In Praise of Hermès’s Seemingly Endless Rainbow of Pink Leathers

The care Hermès puts into color is indicative of how the brand does things different than its competitors

Even with the biggest designers, it’s somewhat rare for a handbag brand to make more than one version of a color at a particular time. Even popular neutrals like tan or grey usually get a single variation per season; most brands don’t have a rabid enough consumer base to care all that much if a bag tends more toward camel or whiskey, and producing both is financially and logistically inefficient in a corporatized fashion world where increasing margins is paramount in decision-makers’ minds. In that context, I can understand why Hermès fanatics are so committed the brand, despite the sky-high prices and draconian purchase rules: Hermès, still largely family-owned and independent, plays for the love of the game. Nowhere is that clearer than in the details, including the fact that the brand currently has literally a dozen shades of pink in the supply chain at one time.

Scrolling the Hermès website is an incredibly satisfying visual experience; the bag listings are grouped loosely by color, which makes it clear in a way I had always known but never fully grasped just how many different shades Hermès makes for its iconic leather bags. I zeroed in on pinks, but Hermès is also particularly well known for its dazzling, vast lineup of blues. On just an inventory distribution level, this type of variety must make Hermès’s worlwide boutique network kind of a nightmare, from an operations standpoint. Between that and the incredible demand for the bags, it’s a lot easier to understand why any particular combination of design, size, leather, color, and hardware might be hard to come by at your local boutique. Plenty of brands don’t have 12 colors, period, available at once.

As you’d imagine, the shades of pink themselves range from the palest blush to the near-purple and near-red, with every undertone you could imagine. They come in forms ranging from little wallets to big totes and moods ranging from girlish to brash. Not only is this diversity a small, pleasant testament to what happens when fashion brands maintain their independence and operate with more respect for their own traditions than modern corporate concerns, but it’s a testament to the versatility of pink, which is too often dismissed as saccharine and unsophisticated for largely sexist reasons. We’ve gathered examples of all the Hermès pinks currently represented on the brand’s website below.