Jean-Louis Dumas was born in Paris in February 1938, the fourth of six children of Robert Dumas and Jacqueline Hermès, and a great-great-grandson of Thierry Hermès, who founded the house as a harness maker in 1837. He studied law and economics, graduating in 1959, and took a further degree at Sciences Po in 1960. As a young man he travelled through Scandinavia and Czechoslovakia as the drummer in a jazz band. In 1962 he married Rena Gregoriades, an Athens-born interior architect who later designed more than 300 Hermès shops, including the renovation of 24 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.
After a year as an assistant buyer at Bloomingdale's in New York, Dumas joined Hermès in 1964 at the age of 26. He became managing director in 1971 under his father, and on Robert Dumas's death in 1978 he became chairman.
At the time Hermès was a respected but rather old-fashioned saddler and leather-goods house. Over the next 28 years Dumas transformed it into a global luxury group while preserving its artisanal methods. He developed silk, leather goods and ready-to-wear and founded the watch company La Montre Hermès in Bienne, Switzerland, in 1978. He acquired the bootmaker John Lobb, the silversmith Puiforcat and the Saint-Louis crystal works, and he expanded into tableware and porcelain. He opened shops across Europe, Asia and the United States, including the Maisons Hermès on Madison Avenue in 2000, in a glass-brick building by Renzo Piano in Ginza in 2001, and in Seoul in 2006. In 1987 the house's 150th anniversary began the tradition of an annual creative theme.
He was also the house's artistic director, and he made bold appointments. In 1997 he entrusted women's ready-to-wear to Martin Margiela, a radical choice for a classic house, and in 2003 he appointed Jean Paul Gaultier as Margiela's successor. In 1988 he invited Véronique Nichanian to lead menswear with carte blanche, beginning a 37-year partnership.
His best-known contribution is a bag. In 1984, on a flight from Paris to London, he found himself sitting next to Jane Birkin, who spilled the contents of her straw basket and complained that she could not find a practical bag for a young mother. Dumas sketched a larger, more supple version of the Kelly, promising to name it after her if she liked it. The Birkin became one of the most coveted handbags in the world.
In 1993 Dumas led Hermès's listing on the Paris stock exchange, while the family retained a controlling stake. He retired for health reasons in 2006, handing day-to-day leadership to Patrick Thomas, the first head of the company from outside the family. His son Pierre-Alexis Dumas became artistic director, and his nephew Axel Dumas became executive chairman in 2013. A keen photographer who always carried a Leica, he was celebrated with an exhibition of his pictures at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in 2008. He was a Commander of the Légion d'honneur and an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Jean-Louis Dumas died in Paris on 1 May 2010, aged 72.
