There is cool, and then there is vaunting West Hollywood slick. Maxfield, the men's and women's boutique on Melrose Avenue, is a little of both. Primitive-looking Roger Herman sculptures loom over the entrance. The building's concrete façade is gray and forbidding—the architectural equivalent, it turns out, of 61-year-old Tommy Perse, Maxfield's owner, who wears his silver hair long and loose, flaunts heavy metal jewelry, paints his nails black, and stocks his store with mostly avant-garde fashion.
This is, in other words, the very last place one would expect to find what is likely the country's largest cache of vintage Hermès. And yet amid the racks of new Yohji Yamamoto and Comme des Garçons is a trove of masculine classics: decades-old forest-green desk sets bearing the simple Hermès Paris logo, patinaed valises and duffels, travel clocks, humidors. They are accoutrements from other eras, made for men who lived well and likely never imagined their possessions would come to be displayed near something called "the naughty case"—which houses a considerably more risqué type of collectible at Maxfield: ghoulish and erotic figurines.
"Hermès has the ability of making an object that's totally useless, something you can't live without," says Max Bernardini, the proprietor of an eponymous vintage luxury-goods emporium in Milan that sells among its brands Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Rolex, and Goyard. (For more on Max, visit bernardinimilano.com.) Extravagance has always been part of Hermès's appeal, but the mature work takes on the added sheen of craftsmanship that feels closer to artistry than utility. "I have a pipe holder from the 1930s, and with everything—from the brass staff to the crocodile base to the stitches—there is such an attention to detail," Bernardini adds. "Once you have something like that on your table, you won't go for anything less."
Like many of those who stalk vintage as a sport and a pastime, Perse is, shall we say, unorthodox. He seems to view questions about his passion as only slightly less bothersome than shoplifters. When asked about the most unusual artifact he has come across in his two decades of hunting Hermès, Perse replies: "A vampire-protection kit." He is kidding, though given his gothic sense of style, this is not immediately apparent.
"Tommy," a helpful intermediary explains, "is not a verbal communicator."
Perse is, however, fairly good at getting his point across—most notably that the store and everything in it belong to him. On this visit, his staff tenses when he steps into the showroom, and customers respond to his stiff manner by submissively flocking to the register.
The list of those who shop at Maxfield includes Hollywood veterans and loyal New York and European clientele. Melanie Griffith—brandishing tattoos—browsed with her son on a recent summer afternoon. According to Perse, father of the T-shirt designer James Perse, there is no typical Hermès customer. Or rather, he declines to elaborate on who one might be, preferring instead to say that he sells to people looking for "something they like, need, and can use."
