l’Ottoman Necessaire d’Hermès

an hermes leather ottoman in cinnamon colored saddle leather is shaped like the world's chicest cooler, with a very slightly concave top, echoing the form of a saddle or a pringle. a rotatable leather handle is attached to the center of the short sides. spoiler alert, the entire leather top piece slides up and off to reveal the storage bin inside.

In January I was watching an Hermès making of video for something I don’t remember in the Necessaires d’Hermès collection, I think, and there were brief shots of this incredible-looking object. I scoured the website to figure out what it was, and it looks like it’s not available in the US, which serves us right, frankly.

screenshot of a pair of extremely well groomed white hands sliding the leather top of an hermes ottoman over the canvas twill storage bin inside. the bin sits in from the edge of the leather covered base, so that the leather top fits flush. two metal posts connect the base and the handle to either side, and the top has slits, not shown here, that slide down onto either side of the posts in an extremely well-fitted way, i'm sure.

But it turns out to be an ottoman, but it also has storage, and a handle. The whole top slides off, and it can hold a blanket, as these screenshots show. For something that doesn’t seem that capacious or actually portable, it sure is beautiful. I will keep it in the necessaires column.

well-groomed white hands of a person with thigh gap lowering a saffron colored wool blanket into the leather trimmed storage bin of an hermes ottoman.

Weirdly, the ottoman gets kind of lost or ignored in the Salone 2013 debut of Philippe Nigro’s capsule collection, les Necessaires d’Hermès.

OK, it was a Necessaires video, which is on the product page, and I had to have been watching it for the Groom wardrobe stand, or the Long Bench, a name which loses the sense of the French: Cheval d’Arçon, pommel horse.

Les Necessaires d’Hermes Ottoman, by Philippe Nigro, $CA19,100 [hermes]