Hermès Birkin baggage are essentially the most coveted—and useful—purses on the planet. Few equipment have held such a agency grip on popular culture and vogue. Because the Intercourse and the Metropolis character Samantha Jones mentioned in an episode with a complete subplot devoted to her mission to acquire one: “It’s not a bag, it’s a Birkin.”
That is why it was with a lot fanfare that Sotheby’s introduced final month it will promote the Birkin prototype that belonged to the inspiration and namesake behind the design, the late French British actress Jane Birkin. And on Thursday (10 July), that buzz proved to be warranted: the scuffed, 50-year-old purse bought for an eye-watering €8.6m in Paris.
Bidding opened at €1m, eliciting a puff from the viewers within the Sotheby’s Paris salesroom. Even that preliminary bid practically doubled the earlier world file for a purse at public sale, set in 2021. A ten-minute bidding battle between 9 collectors over telephones, on-line and within the room drove the value as much as €8.6m with charges, finally going to a collector in Japan, the public sale home mentioned.
However what makes the Birkin bag, and its connection to Jane Birkin, so particular? Because the now-legendary story goes, Birkin occurred to be seated close to Jean-Louis Dumas, the then-chairman of the Hermès group, on an Air France flight. When Birkin complained to Dumas that she struggled to discover a bag that suited her busy life as a mom, he got down to create the right bag for her—in 1985, Hermès introduced her with a prototype, and requested her permission to call it the Birkin. The remainder is historical past.
Followers chalk up the recognition of the Birkin—and the same Hermès mannequin, the Kelly—to the bag’s clear traces, skilled craftsmanship and rarity. Additionally it is a standing image, apart from its hefty price ticket; you can not simply stroll right into a retailer and purchase one off the shelf. Hermès is known to make its well-heeled prospects leap via hoops to even be supplied a possibility to buy the extra common types, with unofficial spend quotas.
Restricted manufacturing and lengthy ready lists have led to a flourishing secondary market, the place the luggage typically fetch even larger costs than they do in Hermès boutiques. House owners are inclined to deal with their baggage with white gloves, so to talk, to take care of their resale worth and shield their funding. (Such a system might sound acquainted to these concerned within the up to date artwork market.)
An in depth-up of the bag, as bought by Sotheby’s Paris Courtesy Sotheby’s
This isn’t the angle Jane had—the actress carried the prototype for years, and it exhibits. The unique bag is weathered and well-worn, and it even bears sticker marks from charities like Unicef. Jane was a vocal activist, and he or she as soon as requested Hermès to cease utilizing her identify to market some baggage over the model’s use of unique animal skins, although they later reconciled.
As artwork spending falls, public sale homes and even industrial galleries have honed in on luxurious items like jewelry, purses, vehicles and sneakers in hopes of attracting new prospects. Hermès baggage are sometimes present in Sotheby’s and Christie’s luxurious gross sales.
Then once more, Birkin baggage usually are not for everybody. They might not have even been for Jane within the latter years of her life. In 2017, she revealed the unthinkable: that her namesake bag now not suited her life-style, and he or she most well-liked to hold no purse in any respect.
“It is a very, very heavy bag,” Jane advised the BBC. “Now I fill my pockets like a person, as a result of then you do not even have to hold something.”
