Well…well…well! Obviously the recession hasn’t put a hurting on some of our fashionable adversaries. According to Reuters, the French Luxury brand has went fourth on breeding its own crocodiles on Australian farms to meet the high demands for their trademark leather bags. AS we know Hermes lovers usually have to wait in the wings several years to obtain exotic skinned bags from Hermes…which usually goes over $50,000 a pop. Patrick Thomas tells Reuters:

“It can take three to four crocodiles to make one of our bags so we are now breeding our own crocodiles on our own farms, mainly in Australia”.

Please remember Hermes bags are all produced by hand ladies, which means that Hermes is already facing a serious challenge in trying to meet their 3,000 crocodile bag quota. Not to mention, farming of Crocodile skins can be expensive. Reuters states that each crocodile has to be kept in a separate holding room, to protect them from being bitten by other reptiles. 40 percent of Hermes business comes from their leather goods, which has been going well since the current economic downturn. Between 50-100 leather workers have been added to the 2,000 craftsmen that are already employed at Hermes’ workshop.

Hermes has already have been adding new features to their growing house, such as textiles and home decor (which I’ll be featuring on the site sometime this week). And while everyone is waiting on owning Hermes clad crocodile skins, Thomas finally adds that “We cannot face demand. “We have massive over-demand. We are limited by our ability to train new craftsmen”. The question that still lingers is – with the high demand of exotic merchandise…how good can luxury farming be on the environment?