The First Birkin Bag, Once Carried by Its Namesake, Is Sold at Paris for a Record-Breaking Price

The original Birkin bag made by Hermès for an actress, singer, and style icon, Jane Birkin, is breaking records as the most expensive purse ever sold at auction. The black leather handbag, which was created specifically for Birkin some 40 years ago, was scooped up at an auction in Paris on Thursday morning for 7 million euros, or $8.2 million. With fees, the bag — which is noticeably worn from years of use — will cost the unnamed buyer an eye-watering $10 million. “This is the bag. Mother of all ‘it’ bags, really,” author Marisa Meltzer said in a video shared by Sotheby’s to promote the auction. Ms. Meltzer recently published the first comprehensive biography of the British-French fashion icon, titled, “It Girl: The Life and Legacy of Jane Birkin.” Before Thursday’s auction the purse had already been sold twice for unknown sums. In 1994 Birkin donated it at an auction benefiting a French charity for AIDS and it was later sold to a Parisian collector, Catherine Benier, in 2000. The Parisian fashion house commissioned the bag for Birkin in 1984 after her chance encounter with the then-head of Hermes, Jean-Louis Dumas, during a flight to London. The story goes that Birkin was carrying a flimsy bag on the plane that broke and spilled on the cabin floor, prompting her to audibly complain that Hermès did not sell a purse big enough to fit all of her items.The young actress then pulled out an airplane vomit bag and sketched out a design of the now-famous purse and handed it to Mr. Dumas, who brought it to life some weeks later. Later that year, the fashion house released the line of bags, naming them after Birkin herself. The Birkin took off and soon became one of Hermes’s most coveted handbags. Decades later, Birkin, before her death, reckoned that obituaries would likely refer to her name as being “like the bag.” She added: “Well, it could be worse.” Birkin died in 2023 at age 76. Nowadays Birkin bags go for tens of thousands of dollars, or sometimes even hundreds of thousands, and are notoriously difficult to purchase. Prospective buyers are often required to through a process not unlike sorority recruitment — befriending Hermès boutique sales associates, dropping thousands of dollars on luxury accessories, and hoping that some elusive authority deems them worthy of joining the Birkin club. “The problem with everyone who wasn’t Jane Birkin is that if you wanted a Birkin, you couldn’t necessarily get one — to this day. So it became this kind of myth,” Ms. Meltzer said. “The Birkin bag meant that you had made it.”The bag’s legendary status has been enshrined in numerous song, movie, and TV references. During a 2001 episode of “Sex and the City,” in what is likely considered one of the handbag’s most famous features, a sales associate pronounces to the ever-stylish Samantha Jones the iconic line: “It’s not a bag, it’s a Birkin!” The identity of the winning bidder of Thursday’s auction has not been made public, though there are several socialites and A-list actresses who are known to have amassed large caches of Birkins. The largest known Hermès collection belongs to a Singaporean socialite named Jamie Chua whose trove includes a $500,000 Himalayan diamond Birkin. Celebrities including Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, and Jennifer Lopez also boast impressive Birkin collections.

The First Birkin Bag, Once Carried by Its Namesake, Is Sold at Paris for a Record-Breaking Price

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