SINGAPORE — Before this week, if you had asked me what I knew about luxury label Hermes, I would only have been able to respond with one word: "Birkin?"

What else could I have expected when I walked into the bright orange backdrop of HermesFit — the luxury brand's globe-trotting pop-up gym — on Monday (April 17)?

Admittedly, I am not into fashion or makeup, but I love a good boxing session, which is something I do frequently. Even better if it's free, since gym memberships are so expensive nowadays.

I also did a double-take when I took a closer look at the brochure for HermesFit: Participants will be loaned Hermes products to use in their workouts. For instance, Hermes leather wallets that can cost up to S$1,250 are used as weights, and the brand's iconic scarves that cost S$800 each are used for yoga. 

The pop-up gym has graced other major cities such as New York, Hong Kong and Sydney. It has been set up to run at Singapore's Orchard Road shopping belt from April 14 to 23.

The idea of a luxury branded gym sounded incredibly weird yet strangely appealing in my mind. The notion of getting sweaty with a leather wallet costing more than rent for housing in this economy was (and still is) ridiculous, not to mention that it still bewilders me why Hermes even allows people to sign up for free.

This must be athleisure gone crazy. All things considered, I thought it was worth a try.

For a start, the Hermes staff members were extremely welcoming. Clad in the ridiculously bright Hermes orange sweatsuits, they went about setting us at ease, encouraging us to join in the activities or assisting us at the photo booths.

When you visit HermesFit, you have to check your watch for the 14th minute of every hour that you're there, because alarm bells will ring, signalling the hourly workout where everyone is encouraged to drop everything and do a minute-long workout.

I still recall being given the tour of the space by someone from Hermes' public relations department, and while she showed me the open space with a miniature boxing ring, the lights began flashing.

"Come on, come on, come on!" shouted this man wearing a football referee uniform in the middle of the boxing ring, which began to look really tiny with a human standing in it. "Everyone give me some jumping jacks!"

I kid you not — every single person in the room began doing jumping jacks like it was a physical education class back in my school days. My minder wasn't spared either and gave me a helpless smile as she started flailing her arms about in the air.

Fine, I thought, giving in to peer pressure, leaning into the "rah-rah" and started doing jumping jacks.

With my ears still ringing and eager for some familiarity, I proceeded to test out HermesFit's row of punching bags.

Here is a quick amateur review of Hermes' luxury boxing experience, as someone who still borrows my boxing gym's house gloves and uses S$8 handwraps from Decathlon: Those bags are gorgeous! 

Each punching bag is adorned with a Hermes scarf design. One bag had a print of an elaborate doodle showing a woman's face, and I have to admit that jabbing her right between her eyebrows felt satisfying.

The gloves (not made by Hermes) and the punching bags (rather soft, light and swung a lot) provided enough of a temporary entertainment for me and the several older women around, who were furiously jabbing the bags for the photo opportunity.

HIGH INTENSITY TRAINING IN LUXURY

After boxing, we were rushed to "Shoes HIIT (high-intensity interval training)", one of the many scheduled classes during the event days.

Contrary to one's first impression, participants do the high-intensity interval training while holding on the shoes and not wearing them. You could get any pair of Hermes shoes you wanted from the counter, which had a spread of a few in varying weight. 

Obviously, I selected the shoes with the thickest platforms for the "grindset", a term used by Generation Z folks like me to represent hustle culture.

The workout left me with sore thigh muscles, however, and I hobbled out of the fitness studio without any Hermes shoes and with a lot less bravado than when I started.

What followed seemed to be an endless deluge of activities. We played games of ping-pong doubles, in which a few Hermes employees and I performed the worlds' most pathetic table tennis rally.

After that, a few snaps at photo booths where I looked at a camera on the ceiling and posed as a rock-climber or a boxer in the ring, a free bottle of hippie fruit juice, and more workouts in front of a mirror with a holographic French woman whispering yoga instructions into my ear.

Oh, and there was a lip makeover counter, for after the workout and just in case I needed my lip fixed with Hermes lipstick.

Did the experience feel absurd? I don't think anything could have prepared me for how strange the entire encounter was, but after a moment of reflection, I can pin it down to the fact that it should have felt gimmicky, but it was strangely sincere.

From the staff members who were passionate and engaging, who sold the whole fitness theme, to how I could "stress test" Hermes products that I would not normally even have the chance to look at, HermesFit did not feel like it was selling me its brand's products.

If I had wanted to buy a scarf, or a bag, after my workout, I would have to look the product up online and go out of my way to a physical store to buy it.

Why would Hermes do this? I guess it's because experiential retail is on the rise, and that retailers and brands know the standard "transactional" shopping experience would not cut it anymore.

With HermesFit, as an outsider to the fashion world, I felt like it was a liberating experience because such luxury was normally exclusive to mere mortals like me.

So, when you walk into HermesFit for free and get to touch a S$800 scarf (with an excellent design that honestly makes me want one), does that make Hermes kind of accessible or less exclusive? One might even venture to call this a democratisation of luxury.

I still know, however, that I'm not going to be buying Hermes anytime soon. I innocently enquired about the lip product that the makeover assistant was slathering on my face during my HermesFit experience and discovered that the price was S$132 a tube.

Not for me. I am someone who smacks on lip balm carelessly in cold weather, and I don't have a single graceful bone in my body. 

Consider me someone who chooses boxing over Birkins. But just maybe, I'll now have a secret pipe dream to own a Hermes scarf.