{"id":54963,"date":"2025-07-10T20:04:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T20:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/54963\/"},"modified":"2025-07-10T20:04:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T20:04:12","slug":"jane-birkins-original-hermes-bag-sells-for-7m-at-sothebys-auction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/54963\/","title":{"rendered":"Jane Birkin’s original Herm\u00e8s bag sells for \u00a37m at Sotheby’s auction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ian Youngs<\/p>\n

Culture reporter<\/p>\n

Watch: The story of Jane Birkin’s \u00a37m handbag<\/p>\n

The original Birkin bag, which set the template for arguably the most coveted accessory in fashion history, has been bought for \u20ac8.6m (\u00a37.4m; $10.1m), becoming the most valuable handbag ever sold at auction.<\/p>\n

The black leather bag was made for singer Jane Birkin in 1985 after she spilled her belongings while sitting next to the boss of luxury fashion house Herm\u00e8s on a flight.<\/p>\n

She asked why they didn’t make bigger bags, so he sketched out the design for a new, more practical but still highly desirable item on the aeroplane’s sick bag.<\/p>\n

The prototype he made was sold to a private collector from Japan at Sotheby’s in Paris on Thursday, far surpassing the \u20ac439,000 (\u00a3378,000; $513,000) previous record sale.<\/p>\n

The auction house said there was an “electrifying” 10-minute bidding war between “nine determined collectors”.<\/p>\n

Morgane Halimi, Sotheby’s global head of handbags and fashion, said the price was a “startling demonstration of the power of a legend and its capacity to ignite the passion and desire of collectors seeking exceptional items with unique provenance, to own its origin”.<\/p>\n

She added: “The Birkin prototype is exactly that, the starting point of an extraordinary story that has given us a modern icon, the Birkin bag, the most coveted handbag in the world.”<\/p>\n

The \u20ac8,582,500 total includes commission and fees. Sotheby’s did not publish a pre-auction estimate.<\/p>\n

\"GettyGetty Images<\/p>\n

Jane Birkin owned the original bag and lent her name to all that followed<\/p>\n

\"GettyGetty Images<\/p>\n

Birkin owned and used the bag for a decade before donating it to charity<\/p>\n

After creating the bag for the Anglo-French singer and actress, Herm\u00e8s put the bag into commercial production, and it remains one of the most exclusive status symbols in fashion.<\/p>\n

Some styles cost many tens of thousands of dollars and have waiting lists of years, with owners including celebrities like Kate Moss, Victoria Beckham and Jennifer Lopez.<\/p>\n

The original has some unique features, such as Birkin’s initials on the front flap, a non-removable shoulder strap, the nail clippers she kept attached to the strap, and marks where she put stickers for causes she supported, such as M\u00e9decins du Monde and Unicef.<\/p>\n

Birkin, who died in 2023 at the age of 76, owned the original bag for a decade and donated it to an auction to raise funds for an Aids charity in 1994.<\/p>\n

It was later bought by Catherine Benier, who has a luxury boutique in Paris, who owned it for 25 years before selling it on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Sotheby’s said the previous record price for a handbag was set by a White Himalaya Niloticus Crocodile Diamond Retourne Kelly 28 in 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ian Youngs Culture reporter Watch: The story of Jane Birkin’s \u00a37m handbag The original Birkin bag, which set…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":54964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51,50,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-54963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114830735007909562","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}