LOWER CASE, HIGHER PURPOSE

As a little girl exploring the Hermès workshops in the 1960s, Pascale Mussard was forbidden from touching the works-in-progress on craftspeople’s desks. She had free rein, however, to play with anything discarded on the atelier floor. “I would pick up these pieces of material and wonder what they could be,” the great-great-great-granddaughter of founder Thierry Hermès told The Rake in 2013. “I think, looking back, the concept for petit h began as early as this.”

Mussard spent most of her life working at the family firm, eventually launching the long-gestating sub-label