Hermès Transforms Pier 36 into a Whimsical “Mystery at the Grooms”

In an old Grooms’ House that was covered in vines lived sixteen horses who fell out of line. The smallest one? Well, she was the hardest to find. The Hermès horses—Cookie, Cabbage, Whinny, Royal, and all their friends—have cantered off, leaving a trail of Birkins behind them.

Hermès invited visitors to corral the horses by playing detective in an immersive mystery experience at New York’s Pier 36 (June 19–29, 2025). The theatrics began at the fictional Grooms’ House, a French country estate where grooms reside with their (apparently mischievous) horses. A frazzled host met visitors in the front garden, where he and his colleague explained the equine catastrophe at hand. Even though renowned horse detective Monsieur Honoré had been called, guests were asked to don their deerstalkers and take matters into their own hands. The horses had to be found within the hour.

A Storybook Experience in New York

The game unfolded across several rooms, as visitors used a custom app to track the horses upon discovery. The “horses” were, in fact, different versions of the maison’s emblem, scattered across patterned silk ties, throw blankets, leather accessories, and decorative trays. The variations on the horse motif were fascinating in their own right, each representing the thoughtfulness and whimsy of Hermès’s designers. Have you ever noticed the difference between the Cubist horse, Butterfly, and the minimalist one, Brilliant? Now you will.

Each room had its own character and, more importantly, each one was an ode to the meticulousness that has become Hermès’s signature. The Laundry was a Pop art extravaganza: washing machines swishing bounties of Hermès orange; pressed white button-downs overhead; boxes of a faux-laundry detergent called GALLOP. In the Dormitory, perfectly made beds created little vignettes about their would-be owners: the tea drinker, the reader, the one who still listens to an old-fashioned radio. In the Rectory, you walked into the middle of a Mad Hatter’s banquet. The table overflows with fruits and ceramics, the walls proffering a gallery of iconic carré scarves. In the Pantry, apples, carrots, and a suite of rare Birkins sat atop bales of hay. When the lights dimmed, neighing could be heard in the distance. Between the rooms, hoofprints lined the hallways. It felt like walking through different pages of a children’s book.

An Ode to the History of Hermès

Some horses hid quite effectively, and visitors needed to do more than look—they had to play to win. In the laundry room, a particularly elusive horse only emerged after winning a game of tic-tac-toe. Finding the sneakier horses required some hints from the top-hatted grooms who roamed the different rooms. One horse’s camouflage was a secret peephole covered by a crooked artwork. In other words, to corral the herd, you needed a bit of teamwork.

The event cleverly nodded to the history of the maison, demonstrating what has set it apart from its competitors for almost two hundred years. Initially catering to horses and their riders, Thierry Hermès opened a harness-making workshop on Rue Basse-du-Rempart in 1837. As the business passed down through the family, Hermès gradually offered saddles and leather goods, before expanding to silks and ready-to-wear in the twentieth century. But “Mystery at the Grooms” explored more than an equestrian background. It magnified the focus on collaboration, intentionality, detail, and process that comprise the Hermès brand.

An Everlasting, Sensorial Dream

Because the great pleasure of “Mystery at the Grooms” was in looking. While searching for the horses, I found myself tracing the detailed stitchwork on a saddle or analyzing the interlocking illustrations on a silk scarf. Soon, the looking became multisensory: How soft that blanket seems! How supple the leather on that bag! Every design contained a surprise, some bit of imagination that reminded me of its history as an object. I wanted to know: who put the finishing touches on this bag’s hardware? What was the artisan thinking about while they did it? Slow-making and slow-looking go hand in hand.

“It magnified the focus on collaboration, intentionality, detail, and process that comprise the Hermès brand,”

At the end of the search, with the horses safely back in their stables, guests were invited into a second garden-space, surrounded by greenery, soft-colored woods, and arches. We were encouraged to linger, to stay dry before venturing back out into southern Manhattan. I watched les amis de la maison sip coffee, decked in H-shaped accessories, catching up with old acquaintances. From the balcony, I saw not the Seine, but the East River, where ferries and tugboats swam across a gloomy sky. By the time I left, I felt like I had emerged from a slow, peaceful morning, the kind that energizes you for the day ahead.