Hermès Breeds Its Own Crocs

Don’t you just hate it when you can’t scrounge up enough crocodiles to make a decent shipment of handbags? Hermès sure does—so much, in fact, that they’ve resorted to breeding their very own crocodiles on farms in Australia to meet its demand of over 3,000 bags a year. The bags, which can cost upwards of $48,000, sometimes take three or four crocs each. The company also has to budget for natural losses that can account for up to a third of their crocodiles. And crocodiles have to be kept separately so as to protect their skin from bites: that’s 16,000 little crocodile rooms at the Hermès farms! Maybe it’s time we all reconsider the case for faux.