- Hermès’ most outrageous products live far beyond the Birkin and the handbag counter.
- The Off Piste pool table is craftsmanship disguised as leisure.
- At AU$372,000 this is luxury as defined by Hermès, with premium materials and handcrafted details throughout.
Think of Hermès and you’ll be forgiven for thinking only of the Birkin, the undeniable queen of luxury accessories, where customers wait a year, purchase three snakeskin belts and a hat to be offered the chance to buy one. It’s a world of waiting lists, closed doors, and polite refusals. And, frankly, we can’t get enough.
But away from the Birkin counter and the mythology of French-made bags, the maison has quietly been creating something far more interesting. A collection of objects so indulgent, so improbable, that they feel less like products and more like personal fantasies rendered in leather and wood.
This is Hermès beyond handbags, a treasure trove of forever pieces that have all found their way onto my “Forever Home” mood board.
Included in this luxury buffet of goods is connected speakers, all-mountain skis, a bespoke surfboard, cocktail trunks, neon jukeboxes flirting, and skateboards that cost more than a small car. Hermès, it turns out, has been perfecting the art of play as seriously as it has saddlery. And yet, among this quietly outrageous lineup, one object rises above the rest.
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Existing firmly in the “If I won the lottery, I wouldn’t tell anyone, but there would be signs” category, is the Off Piste 8-foot American pool table.
Finished in vert anglais (English green for the ill-informed), the French-made pool table is a pièce unique, beautifully assembled for any guy’s home. It’s the kind of piece you don’t buy for a games room so much as install in the saloon of a superyacht… or the lair of a particularly tasteful Bond villain.
Its archetypal silhouette is unmistakably Hermès. Matte Regate taurillon leather contrasts against glossy lacquered, curved legs, that gives the table a timeless frame that oozes class.
Hermès’ approach is, as ever, about handcrafted beauty that’s found in every stitch, every choice. The rails, cabinet, and pockets are wrapped in taurillon leather, cut, shaped, stitched, threaded, polished by hand. Even the rack, which has been crafted in bakelite with lacquer and leather, feels over-engineered in the best possible way.
It arrives complete with four maple-wood cue sticks wrapped in leather, a billiard chalk covered in Regate taurillon leather (because of course it is), and an Hermès cover for storage. So that in the event that you actually elect to use this table for its primary purpose, it has the protection it deserves.
And the price for this ultimate expression of bespoke leisure? $265,400 USD (~AU$372,000). Steep for a pool table, yes. But not bad for one of Hermès’ most innovative luxury products. And yes, you can Apple Pay it.
