Jean-Louis Scherrer dressed the super-rich — then Hermès fired him from his own label

Jean-Louis Scherrer launched his fashion house in 1962 on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré with backing from millionaire Jacques Chabrol. By the 1980s, the house was known for its opulent, hand-beaded designs worn by Anne-Aymone Giscard d'Estaing, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and Raquel Welch. Scherrer's wealthy Middle Eastern clients made the label a fixture of the Gulf oil elite.

In 1990, Hermès and Ilona Gestion — who together held a 90% controlling stake — fired Scherrer without warning. He was the first couture designer ever sacked from his own-name label. Scherrer described it as being dismissed 'like a maid.' The firing was publicly condemned by Marc Bohan and Pierre Bergé, but the damage was done: the founder was gone from his own house.

Sales collapsed after the Gulf War (1990–1991) when Middle Eastern clients stopped buying. The house limped on under Erik Mortensen and later Stéphane Rolland (1997–2007), but the brand without its founder was adrift. In 2008, the fashion house closed permanently. Jean-Louis Scherrer died in 2013. The brand survives only as a licensing name owned by the Dumesnil Group.