Since early 2026, Hermès scarf tags have carried an extra line at the bottom — an 11-character string that starts with an L.
I have looked at several hundred to figure this out (most of them aren’t mine, though quite a few were… I am grateful to those who contributed their tags).
It is likely a unique identifier per scarf.
I covered the rest of the tags in earlier posts: typically, we have the scarf title, some format/material indication, colorway, a reference code that includes a colorway ID, and a batch ID (the month and year it was printed). There is also a barcode and a QR code, with the latter being added starting in April 2018.
The new L-numbers started showing up in March 2026 (batch number HTH2603).
Let’s look at the number:
L3099841001
L3 — constant. constant. I haven’t seen any tags that start with a different combination. It may switch to L4 or LX later. L may stand for Lyon or Ligne or Lot… take your guess.
099841 — it seems to be a serialized number that increments with time. In most examples where a scarf is made across several months, the later month will carry a larger number.
001 — this seems to be a suffix. Most of these I have seen are 001, but I have also seen 002, 003, 008, and 900.
Whatever it is, it seems to be a unique L-number that is finer than per reference+colorway+batch granularity.
The L-number is not directly tied to a reference number. I have seen multiple copies of the same scarves in the same colorway with different L-number.
The L-number is not one L-number per lot. There are unique L-codes within anything that can be assumed to be a lot — e.g., same design and colorway with the same batch (month/year number).
The most reasonable assumption is that the number is unique to each scarf. The number itself likely encodes the manufacturing location and the manufacturing sequence. Unlike bag numbers, I don't see the scarf ones on the store receipts, but perhaps that time will come.
We may, of course, learn more with time (or perhaps Hermès will take pity on us collectors this time and actually explain it).
Let me know what you think these numbers are.