The first Hermès Birkin bag, which belonged to the late actress Jane Birkin, is set to be auctioned off for a price that could reach millions of dollars, according to international media reports. The starting price for the bag is expected to be $500,000.
The Hermès Birkin is the most iconic handbag in the fashion world. The bag will officially appear at the Sotheby's Paris auction in July.
The first Hermès Birkin bag owned by the late actress Jane Birkin is set to be auctioned next July.
But this is not the crocodile-skin, diamond-encrusted Hermès bag that is often seen on the hands of celebrities, but the original Hermès Birkin, the first of this legendary bag line, born in 1984.
This is a completely “unusual” handbag. Because the bag is quite dirty, the leather is peeling, there is no logo, the lock is not plated... Inside the bag there is still a nail clipper.
Jane Birkin herself once joked: “It looks more like a garbage bag.” But it is this very unusualness that makes the world's collectors restless.
According to the description from Sotheby's website, the bag was specially crafted for Jane Birkin by the then-Chairman of Hermès, Jean-Louis Dumas, after a chance conversation between the two on a flight from Paris to London.
Actress Jane complained that there was no bag that was both pretty and big enough for a nursing mother like her. So Dumas took out an airplane sick bag and sketched the design of the first Hermès Birkin bag.
A few months later, the first Birkin was born, larger, more practical, and luxurious in a "very French" way.
Actress and singer Jane Birkin with her first Birkin bag, designed and manufactured exclusively for her by luxury brand Hermès.
Jane Birkin carried this bag for nearly 10 years. It was once marked with reflective stickers for walking at night, and she wore it as a messenger bag with a fabric strap she attached herself.
She did not cherish it or display it, but simply considered it a bag. In 1994, she decided to auction the bag to raise funds for AIDS patients, an action ahead of its time.
The bag later belonged to Catherine B., France's most famous Hermès bag collector, who has exhibited it at MoMA (New York), the Victoria & Albert Museum (London) and many prestigious fashion exhibitions.
And now, more than 30 years later, that Hermès bag is about to become one of the most valuable fashion items ever sold at auction.
Experts say this bag could easily surpass the record of the Hermès Himalaya Birkin model, which was sold for $450,000 (over VND11.7 billion) in 2022. Because this is not just a handbag, but a monument to fashion culture.
This bag marked the birth of a line of bags that the whole world craved, but more importantly, it was associated with Jane Birkin, a woman who never considered fashion as something to show off but to be true to herself.
The first Hermès Birkin bag is expected to fetch a starting auction price of up to $500,000, according to experts.
The Hermès Birkin has long been a symbol of absolute luxury, more expensive than gold, harder to buy than diamonds. But this first Birkin proves the opposite: The handbag does not need to be shiny, does not need to be neat, just needs to have a story and traces of a person's life, that is enough to make millions of dollars lie on the table waiting to be hammered.
The auction will take place on July 10 in Paris, after the bag has been exhibited in New York and Paris. The starting price has not been announced, but according to predictions from El País and The Times, the price could reach from $500,000 to more than $1 million (over VND 13 billion to over VND 26 billion), depending on the competition in the auction.
Regardless of who ends up with it, the bag will forever be a part of history, where a simple British woman, flying with a bag full of stickers, changed the way the world thought about what high fashion was.
Photos: Sotheby's, Getty, Instagram
Source: https://dantri.com.vn/giai-tri/chiec-tui-hermes-birkin-dau-tien-sap-duoc-dau-gia-khoi-diem-13-ty-dong-20250609145625206.htm
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