New, Unworn and Pre-Owned Hermès Ready-to-Wear · London

Hermès ready-to-wear is the least discussed part of the house and, for people who know it, the most quietly satisfying. There is no visible branding on almost any of it. A Hermès cashmere or a silk shirt is recognisable only to someone who knows the weight of the cloth and the way a shoulder is cut, which is precisely the point.

It is bought a little differently from everything else we sell. A bag is a specification — size, leather, colour, hardware. Clothing is a fit, and the same marked size behaves differently across a knit, a jacket and a shirt because the house cuts closer than most. That is why we measure every garment flat and publish the numbers, so you are choosing against your own measurements rather than against a label.

Sizing runs French: 34 to 44 for women, with menswear in the usual European measurements. As a rough guide French 36 corresponds to a UK 8, 38 to a UK 10 and 40 to a UK 12, but that is a starting point rather than an answer, because a boxy cashmere and a tailored jacket in the same marked size fit nothing alike. Where we can, we list flat measurements as well as the label size.

What passes through our hands most often is the knitwear — cashmere in the house colours, the H-motif cardigans and jumpers — along with silk shirts and blouses cut from carré prints, and occasionally outerwear. Leather pieces from the ready-to-wear line are rarer and go quickly, because they are made in the same workshops as the bags and it shows.

Silk clothing deserves particular attention. Blouses and shirts printed with scarf designs are among the most collectable things the house makes in cloth, and like the scarves themselves, a discontinued print in a good colourway is worth more than the same garment in a print that ran for years. It is one of the few places in ready-to-wear where the design matters as much as the fit.

Condition on clothing is read differently again. Cashmere pills at the friction points — under the arms, at the cuffs — and pilling is normal rather than damage, though heavy pilling means the piece has been worn a great deal. Silk shows at the underarm and along seams. On leather ready-to-wear, look at the lining and the elbows. We photograph these points rather than only the front of a garment on a hanger.

This is the smallest category we keep and the most irregular. Ready-to-wear reaches the secondary market from wardrobes rather than from boutiques, in single pieces and single sizes, which means this page will often hold very little and rarely holds two of anything. We would rather it looked thin than pad it.

Every garment is checked by hand in our London workroom — composition and care labels, size marking, seams, linings, buttons, and the friction points where wear appears — and measured flat so the numbers are yours rather than the label's. Shown by appointment in London, where trying a piece on is genuinely worth the trip. Sent insured across the UK.