Hermès Toupet Bucket Bag Vert Foncé Horse Hair Noir Evercalf Palladium Hardware

The Toupet came off the Hermès Spring/Summer 2017 runway, a mini bucket bag built from real horse hair cut into tiers of fringe that fall in layers from a Noir Evercalf collar to the base. In Vert Foncé the hair reads as a deep teal-green that shifts with the light as the fringe moves, the bag named for the toupet, the forelock of mane that falls between a horse's ears, in keeping with the house's equestrian vocabulary.

The structure is a leather bucket beneath the fringe: Noir Evercalf forms the collar, base, and single flat top handle, the open top closes by drawstring, and the interior is lined in black Chèvre. Palladium hardware keeps the fittings cool against the dark hair. A runway novelty produced in small numbers, built as an evening piece where the moving fringe is the entire effect.

Collector's Insight:
The Toupet is a runway-only Hermès novelty, produced in small numbers for Spring/Summer 2017 and never part of the standard catalog. Real horse hair is a material the house uses rarely and almost never in this volume, and the tiered-fringe construction has not been repeated, which places the Toupet with collectors of runway and novelty pieces rather than the leather-bag market. Vert Foncé is among the most striking of the limited color runs the bag appeared in.

Resale Insight:
Runway novelty pieces from Hermès trade outside standard leather-bag dynamics, valued on rarity and the fact that the construction was never reissued rather than on color cycles or size demand. The Toupet surfaces infrequently, condition is critical because the horse hair cannot be restored once disturbed, and a pristine example with box and dust bag sits at the top of the available supply.