From the first to fakes: Original Hermès Birkin bag goes up for auction • FRANCE 24 English

From the first to fakes: Original Hermès Birkin bag goes up for auction • FRANCE 24 English

It’s time now for our entre segment and today we’re focusing on one of the most soughtafter French handbags and its fakes. Solange man joins me in the studio for more on this. Hello Solange. So Hermes’s original Birkin bag is actually going up for auction here in Paris. Start there. Yeah, it is. SE is auctioning off the original Birkin bag, the very first one ever made, which is of course for collectors a bit like the holy grail. The auction house knows this. They even held an exhibit in New York in June and now one in Paris which actually runs up until today. Uh so this is the last shot for the general public to catch a glimpse of this famous bag. Uh and also a number of other pieces of which SE is calling fashion icons and then tomorrow on July 10th uh the bag will go up for auction again. So how much will it go for? Well, handbag lovers already shell out eyewatering sums for all sorts of handbags uh from Chanel to Louis Vuitton to Gucci and Hermes is uh for many people the ultimate status symbol in part because it’s nearly impossible to go into the shop and come out with a Birkin bag or a Kelly bag even if you have tens of thousands of euros that they cost generally and allegedly it can even take quite a bit of cajoling and buying of other items first to then be put on the very long uh waiting list for these classic cult status accessories. Uh and they actually generally uh they g generally gain value once they are purchased. There’s a strong secondhand market in part because they are so rare and coveted and secondhand shops are actually increasingly being targeted by thieves because of this. So how much is the estimate for uh the first Birkin? Well, so these won’t say unless you are a verified potential bidder, but it does mention previous auctions, namely that of a crocodile diamond Kelly bag, which sold for some $500,000, and a sheep sweater worn by Princess Diana, uh, which sold for over a million dollars. So, this could be a record-breaking auction. All right. So, so roll back a little bit. How did the infamous Hermes bag come to be? I mean, how was the first Birkin bag created? It’s actually really a really really charming uh story because it mixes clumsiness with chance encounter with a utilitarian need being filled by great craftsmanship and there is a good dose of uh luxury and celebrity in there too. Some 40 years ago, the singer and actress Jane Berkin was on a flight from Paris to London. She actually told the story to American media a few years ago before she died. And she said she’d been upgraded to first class when some of her belongings spilled out of her agenda. And the man sitting next to her said she should get flaps to store things in to store in her agenda. Uh and she said, “I would if Hermes made flaps.” Uh at which point he said, “I am Hermes.” She was sitting next to the Elmes CEO, Jean Ri Juma. And from that conversation, they drew a first sketch of what was to become uh this most iconic of bags, the Birkin bag. and they actually drew it on the paper baggie that you have in front in the airplane seat, the the vomit bag. From that sketch, uh the artisans of Elmes got to work. They made a first cardboard prototype and then this one in 1984 and they asked Jane Berken if they could name it after her in the tradition of the Kelly bag, which was named after Grace Kelly. She said yes. And that first prototype actually has seven unique differences, including something that for me is an absolute must when it comes to a bag, a shoulder strap. It has some special features like a strap that can’t be removed. If you’re familiar with Perkins, they don’t have a strap. This one does. You also have the JB initials and traces of the old stickers she put on it. She was truly the queen of customization. Now, as for the sticker marks, Jane Berkin was well known for her activism. Uh, and the stickers were a way of not only dressing down a a luxury item, which is potentially the epitome of cool, but also a means of representing her favorite causes. She actually auctioned off the bag in 1994 for an AIDS charity. And she also actually later requested that her name not be used for the Elmes crocodile bags because of animal cruelty. As for the bag’s cult status, uh Jane Berkin also controversially told Vogue in 2011, “It’s very nice that everyone’s got one and wants one. Uh if people want to go for the real thing, fine. If they want copies, that’s fine, too. I don’t think it really matters.” Now, that’s really interesting because the Birkin bag is actually one of the world’s most copied and most counterfeited handbags out there. Yeah, it ha it is, and it has been for decades. Uh, and it was long before uh the buzz uh the latest buzz this year over Walmart selling an $80 knockoff. Their so-called working bag uh looks quite like the Birkin and it was later pulled from Walmart’s uh uh website, but not before it went viral uh among influencers. But beyond those obvious uh knockoffs, there is uh an over $460 billion industry of fakes of all sorts. And it is increasingly difficult to navigate for brands and buyers these fakes. Uh the these those were uh the OECD’s 2021 figures. And some of these knockoffs are super fakes or they are so similar to the original that even experts at high-end secondhand shops and collectors as well, they can’t tell. This is the real thing. This is the fake one. On the strap here, you have a metal part with an engraving. It’s a manual engraving. The one here is a laser engraving, which means it’s a counterfeit. It’s true. I had to call on the expertise of others who came and gave me their advice on whether to sell the bag or not because I wasn’t sure myself. So, with all of these super fakes becoming easier to get, particularly on the internet, could this be the beginning of the end for the luxury handbag business? Well, not necessarily. Hermes, for example, is opening uh new workshops across France to increase production at least a little bit because each bag they say takes about 40 hours uh to for highly trained artisans to do uh who and they are continuing in France’s long tradition of craftsmanship. Estimates vary, but the luxury bag industry is valued anywhere between 50 and 70 billion worldwide, and it’s growing by around 6% a year, but the counterfeit world is also thought to be around $50 billion. uh for luxury handbags alone. Uh and with the fakes, the money often goes towards organized crime and exploited workers, namely in China. And we also have to remember that all all of this isn’t necessarily only about money. Things like the Birkin bag, uh but also others like Chanel, Seline, Louis Vuitton, uh they are status symbols. So what happens when you can’t tell a fake from the real thing? Some will argue that this is actually a good thing that uh it’s in line with a long tradition in fashion where before the industrial revolution seamstress’s jobs were to copy designs. Others will say no this is not a de democratization of luxury that this is theft and that it’s eating away at craftsmanship creativity livelihoods and or the the savoir fair that has made Hermes Hermes but also other little brands as well uh that are starting out as they all try to create the future’s next timeless accessory. We’ll have to see if the it bag in 40 years time is the Birkin or if it’s something else. It’ll be interesting to see how it pans out. Thank you for that salange salange man there with your entreneur. Don’t forget if you want you can always take a closer look on the website franc224.com.

As the original Birkin bag goes up for auction at Sotheby’s in Paris, we discuss what this original prototype is expected to fetch for. We also take a look at how this iconic handbag came to be: thanks to the late Jane Birkin’s clumsiness and a chance encounter on a flight in first class. We also discover how near-identical knockoffs, or “superfakes”, are making it harder to check if a luxury bag is the real deal or a counterfeit version. 
#birkin #hermes #handbag

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