The world is in the throes of Birkin mania.
This month the original Birkin bag, made by Hermes for British actress Jane Birkin in 1984, sold for US$10.1mil (approximately RM42.9mil) at Sotheby’s in Paris.
The way Jane wore it, festooned with nail clippers and stickers for political causes, has led to its own slang: to “Birkinify” one’s bag.
The omnipresent Labubu plush toys that fans like to hang on their bags are said to have been inspired by the way Jane affixed eclectic trinkets to her Birkins. Riffs on the Hermes classic, such as the Boatkin, have become sought-after novelty items that fetch their own hefty prices.
On social media, explainers proliferate on how to emulate Jane’s late 1960s carefree, bourgeois-bohemian style, with sheer crocheted dresses and ballet flats.
Read more: Still obsessed with Labubu? Sorry, fashion did the bag charm trend first
All of this is happening two years after her death on July 16, 2023, after a cancer diagnosis and more than a decade of treatment.
She was a cult figure, particularly outside France, where she lived most of her life.
Jane, who was born in London, became a revered actress who appeared in more than 70 films and a musician whose most famous song, Je T’aime… Moi Non Plus (I Love You… Me Neither), with Serge Gainsbourg, was a worldwide hit.
It was banned by the Vatican for its lasciviousness, and Jane responded that the pope was their best publicist.
In 2023, the black-walled house on the Left Bank where the couple lived opened as a museum, and tickets to tour the residence sell out months in advance.
In Jane B By Agnes V, a 1988 documentary directed by Agnes Varda that was made as Jane was turning 40, she dumps out the contents of her original black Birkin bag – the first “What’s In My Bag” video perhaps?
Out of the beaten-up black vessel tumble multiple notebooks, a Swiss Army knife, newspaper clippings, Maybelline Great Lash mascara, pencils, cash, cigarettes, a Fyodor Dostoyevsky novel and Scotch tape.
She fixes her gaze on the camera with a wry look and says: “Find out anything after seeing what’s in the bag? Even when you show it all, you reveal very little.”
Jane knew that the bag had more name recognition than she did. During her life, people would ask if she was the same Birkin as the bag.
She’d say, “Yes, and the bag is going to sing now!”
In person, the original Birkin looks as if it might have been found in a shipwreck, with its fraying handles and mottled leather patina and marks from where she had affixed Doctors Without Borders and UNICEF stickers.
The nail clippers she had dangled from the bag were still there.
It was designed with Jean-Louis Dumas, then the Hermes CEO.
In a kind of rom-com-style meet-cute, the two sat next to each other on a flight from London to Paris and came up with the idea for a holdall that would be more suitable than the baskets Jane had carried as bags since she was a teenager.
“She didn’t treat it as an art piece,” said Adam Lena, a couture dealer from Warsaw, Poland, who went to the public viewing at Sotheby’s.
“It’s just a normal bag for every day. That’s the amazing thing about it. She didn’t treat it as an heirloom.”
Everyone else has a very different relationship to the bag. It’s nearly impossible to walk into an Hermes store and just buy one.
Someone who wants a Birkin has to establish a relationship as a customer of the house, often buying scarves or wallets or sweaters or smaller bags before they are “offered” one, in Hermes parlance.
The bag cost US$2,000 (RM8,500) when it was released in the mid-1980s.
Today the least expensive Birkin at US retail would sell for more than US$10,000 (RM42,500), depending on the size, colour and material – tariffs and state taxes notwithstanding.
Faye Landes, a longtime retail analyst, said the value of the Birkin prototype was closely entwined with Jane’s status as an icon – a category of person as rare and coveted as the handbag she carried.
“Very few people have either the talent or the resources” to become one, she said.
At 4:16 p.m. July 10, bidding on the bag began. Some 270 participants from 38 countries had registered for that day’s auction after the bag had been displayed in Asia, Europe and the United States.
After an invitation-only cocktail party for clients, during which Sotheby’s served Champagne and chocolates shaped like tiny Birkin bags, the bidding began.
As in a scene from a film, there were gasps as the figure rose from US$1.7mil (RM7.2mil), rapidly increasing in a nine-way bidding war that played out over 10 tense minutes.
The bidding ended at US$10.1mil (RM42.9mil), including a buyer’s premium, the bag going to Valuence, a Japanese fashion conglomerate.
Strangers cheered and hugged one another. The Birkin broke all kinds of records. It became the most valuable handbag ever sold at auction. It outsold the hat of Emperor Napoleon I and Princess Diana’s sheep sweater.
The truth is that owning a Birkin has become shorthand for making it.
Many Real Housewives and Kardashian-Jenners own them.
RickDick, the name of an artificial intelligence meme artist on Instagram, posted a parody video of Kim Kardashian breaking the glass of the Sotheby’s display and stealing the bag. Kim reposted it.
Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, another perpetual object of style obsession, owned a large black one. So what could be more indicative of success than owning the original Birkin?
Read more: Like the famous bag named after her, Jane Birkin is a style icon
But, what would Jane think of all this?
As someone who eschewed plastic surgery on her own face, she would probably find the so-called "Birkin Body" – a US$75,000 (RM318,450) body lift from the neck to the knees offered by Dr Ryan Neinstein – darkly funny.
She was a lifelong progressive activist who would have loved that her name was appropriated in the Bushwick Birkin – the nickname for the Telfar Shopping Bag popular with creative types, particularly among people of colour and within the queer community.
She might even have taken a shine to the divisive Labubus. She’d had a beloved stuffed toy named Munkey since childhood until she buried it with Gainsbourg, her former lover who died in 1991.
Her burial plot is just a few yards away in Montparnasse Cemetery in an overgrown English secret garden where fans leave tokens for her: miniature bulldog figurines, headshots, notes, bouquets of sunflowers.
Jane lived a life full of surprises and contradictions as she confronted motherhood, sexuality, fame, consent, abuse, respect.
But the Hermes bag that is synonymous with her to this day?
Its creation myth didn’t warrant even a sentence in Jane’s diary. Her life cannot be summed up in one outfit, one relationship, one song, one role or even one bag. – ©2025 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
