Hermès opens at Wilmette’s Plaza del Lago, testing North Shore market for luxury handbags
The growing number of designer boutiques at Wilmette’s Plaza del Lago were just joined by a power player in fashion — the French luxury brand Hermès, which sells $10,000-plus handbags coveted by celebrities.
Along with the soon-to-open Oscar de la Renta and other high-end designer shops, Hermès will test shoppers’ willingness to spend high dollar figures at the serene North Shore shopping center.
Top designers’ stores have filled storefronts on Chicago’s Oak Street in recent years, but a marketing manager at WS Development, Plaza del Lago’s owner, said its suburban lakefront location will draw clientele who don’t want to trek all the way to downtown, as well as customers from other states.
Plaza del Lago has been attracting North Shore shoppers for more than a century to its Spanish-inspired stucco buildings with red barrel-tiled roofs. Real estate giant WS Development acquired it in June 2022 and has shifted the tenant mix in the more than 20 storefronts to designer apparel brands, including Veronica Beard, Thom Browne, James Perse, Rag and Bone, Peter Millar, LoveShackFancy and others.
Shoppers were plentiful last week, completely filling the landscaped parking lot in front of the new Hermès two-story, 8,000-square-foot boutique. It’s the second storefront in Illinois after the Oak Street location.
Hermès’ signature Birkin and Kelly handbags have proved their desirability over decades, largely because the brand limits their availability.
“The Birkin bag is a better investment than the S&P 500,” said Gregory Carpenter, Harold T. Martin Professor of Marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
If customers find a way to get their hands on the desired bag, they can resell for more than double the retail price, according to Sotheby’s, one of the oldest and largest brokers of fine art and luxury goods.
Luxury brands largely succeed in their tactics by “making their products hard to get and exclusive,” Carpenter said.
And then customers “compete for the right” to buy their most attractive products by developing a customer relationship with the brand.
“If you walk into an Hermès store and say, ‘I have $10,000, I’d like to buy a Birkin bag,’ my understanding is they will not sell you one,” he added.
But their policy of restricting access to their products hasn’t come without backlash. In 2024, a group of customers sued the brand for alleging the company violated antitrust laws by compelling customers to spend thousands of dollars at the store before being offered the opportunity to purchase a bag.
“They were arguing that requiring people to buy inexpensive or less expensive items in order to access the more expensive ones was illegal. But that’s what the luxury companies do,” Carpenter said.
Visitors to the shop, located at 1515 Sheridan Road, are engrossed in a sea of patterned silk fabrics and exorbitant leather handbags. Greek-inspired overhead light fixtures intrinsic to the Hermès brand dramatize the entryway.
A spiral staircase leads shoppers up to the second floor, where ready-to-wear collections of upscale men’s and women’s clothing are displayed neatly on wood hanging racks.
“We are thrilled to open our doors at Plaza del Lago and to have been so warmly and enthusiastically welcomed by the Wilmette community,” said Diane Mahady, president and CEO of Hermès Americas in a statement to Pioneer Press.
WS Development announced the signing of a lease with Hermès of Paris Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Hermès International, in June 2025. The store was renovated and officially opened to the public Aug. 8.
“This marks not just the arrival of an iconic luxury house, but the beginning of a new era for this iconic destination,” said WS Development President Samantha David.
A spokesperson for WS declined to comment on how much interior renovations cost for the remodel, but said the development group has made a “meaningful, long-term investment in Plaza del Lago as a whole.”
This includes restoring the 100,000-square-foot property’s historic architecture, installing various infrastructure upgrades, expanding available parking areas, sidewalk restoration and landscaping.
Additional tenants that WS has brought in include Lola + The Boys, Space 519, Lilly Pulitzer and upscale eatery The Henry, with more tenants to come.
Space 519, a designer boutique with restaurants and an espresso bar, was recently named by the New York Times as one of the top 25 clothing stores in the country, according to readers.
While a CVS pharmacy and Jewel-Osco supermarket still serve as anchor stores for the shopping center, former tenant Yellowbird, a card and stationary shop, moved out of the Plaza for downtown Wilmette in 2024, along with Hanig’s Footwear and children’s boutique Giggles and Giraffes in 2023. Their relocation is emblematic of the shopping center’s shift toward providing increased brand-name luxury options.
WS Development also manages Wilmette strip mall Edens Plaza, home to e-commerce furniture retailer Wayfair, which opened its first brick and mortar storefront in 2024.
Wilmette officials remain optimistic new openings in both shopping centers will help lower the village’s commercial vacancy rate, which currently rests just below 6%, per previous reports.