Hermès Threw a Massive Musical-Theater Street Fair to Celebrate Their New Madison Avenue Flagship Store

Maison Hermès is back in New York and ready for business. After eight years of planning, the French luxury label opened its biggest store ever: a 20,250-square-foot flagship at 706 Madison Avenue, featuring five airy floors, rooftop garden, and a full bar. To celebrate, the house transformed the four entire Upper East Side blocks into a rollicking street fair, which fed into a shindig that was part musical theater extravaganza, part love letter to New York City—and spanned four different locations. Hermès commissioned Love Around the Block, a roving original musical about a couple who met—where else?—outside the Hermès store. The players (and a entire brass band) led guests through the new store and out onto the street, past rows of food trucks dishing up New York classics like dim sum, falafel, and Junior’s cheesecake, where the party continued one just block downtown inside the house’s former flagship space. Guests including Julius Randle, Chloe Fineman, Rachel Sennott, Chloe Wise, and Martha Stewart danced, sipped, and noshed inside the kaleidoscopic space. The new Maison Hermès at 706 Madison may now be one of the largest retail spaces in the country, but its journey is still a very New York tale.