The original bag custom-made for actress Jane Birkin, which became one of the era-defining designs of the 20th century, was sold in Paris yesterday for a record €8.6mn ($10.04mn), auctioneer Sotheby’s said.
According to fashion lore, the first Birkin bag was born when the Franco-British actress and singer sat next to Hermes executive Jean-Louis Dumas on a flight in 1984 and told him she needed a stylish yet functional bag as a young mother.
Dumas immediately sketched out the rectangular handbag, with a dedicated space for baby bottles.
The company made that one for her, then started selling smaller versions to the public.
The design became a hit and has helped fuel the growth of the fashion brand.
Regular Birkin bags sell for more than $10,000.
The first one – which has Birkin’s JB initials on the flap and, unlike its descendants, has a strap that cannot be removed – was bought by a private Japanese buyer over the phone, Sotheby’s said.
The price was the highest on record for a fashion item, it added.
“It was a travel bag. Clearly, it was worn for nine years by Jane Birkin on a daily basis and the form is still very beautiful,” Aurelie Vassy, head of the Handbags and Fashion Department at Sotheby’s Europe and Middle East, told Reuters.
Birkin auctioned the bag in 1994 to support Sidaction, a French charity that fights HIV/Aids.
In 2000, when it went on sale again, a private French collector bought it.
When British-born Birkin died in 2023, the French capital’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, said the “most Parisian of the English has left us”.
Birkin had lived in her adopted France since the late 1960s and was remembered as much for her warmth and campaigning as for her acting and singing, most famously on the hit single *Je t’aime…moi non plus.
The modern design classic, owned by a well-known Paris-based handbag collector, sparked a telephone bidding war up to €7mn, with the final sale price set at €8.58mn with commission and fees, the Sotheby’s website showed.
The previous record sale price for a handbag at auction was set by a diamond- and white gold-encrusted crocodile skin Hermes Kelly 28 which fetched nearly $513,000 in 2021 at Christie’s in Hong Kong.
Thursday’s seller, Catherine Benier, who has a boutique in the upmarket 6th district in Left Bank Paris, told the *New York Times before the sale that the bag was the “jewel in my collection”.
