Design’s Dream Lab
Good taste, however it’s discovered, can become an addiction. When one client first approached Axel de Beaufort, design and engineering director of Hermès’s special-orders division, Hermès Sur-Mesure, with a car proposal, he wanted it to “shout out loud with Hermès,” recalls Beaufort. “I told him he came to us for the wrong reason, then.” Hermès, in its exquisitely Parisian way, does not shout. One hundred and eighty-four years of heritage does not allow it. “Go discreet but strong,” Beaufort counseled. “Don’t overdo it.” The customer listened. An American automotive collector, he has since been entirely won over to the Hermès way of
