A rain hat, a flight pillow and a bed for her cat. . . Jane Birkin had many uses for the handbag that bore her name, but wearing it on the arm didn’t top the list.
The Anglo-French actress, who died at her home in Paris last week aged 76, inspired Jean-Louis Dumas, former President of Hermes, to create the luxury brand’s iconic – and highly coveted – bag after a chance encounter on a plane in the early ’80s.
She recalled, “As everything fell out of my bag, the man next to me said, ‘You should have one with pockets.’
“I said, ‘As soon as Hermes makes one with pockets, I’ll have that.’
“And he said, ‘But I’m Hermes, and I’ll pocket bags for you.’
Jane sketched the bag she envisioned on a medical bag, handed it to her traveling companion – and the rest is history.
Over the next four decades, the Hermes Birkin became the world’s most coveted fashion accessory, with waiting lists of up to six years for some styles – the albino Nile crocodile ‘Himalaya’ being the most prized – and shoppers willing to pay upwards of £300,000 to snag one.
The Anglo-French actress, who died at her home in Paris last week aged 76, inspired Jean-Louis Dumas, former President of Hermes, to create the luxury brand’s iconic – and highly coveted – bag after a chance encounter on a plane in the early ’80s
Jane herself didn’t appreciate the bags that much. In fact, the star only owned one Birkin at a time and used it to the point of destruction before selling it for charity.
“One is enough,” she told Vogue in 2011. “Every bag I carry with me will go the same way I do. It will hold the same planes and be squashed the same way and act as a cushion in the airports.”
The actress and singer kept essentials – diary, phone, photos of her three daughters and makeup – in her Birkin, but admitted that in her final years she had to stop carrying “that rather trivial heavy piece of luggage” as it had contributed to her tendonitis.
She also admitted to using the bag as an umbrella, sleeping on it at airports and even letting her cat run free to play in it.
Jane only owned five Birkins – and subsequently sold them – all made from plain black leather and personalized with stickers, worry beads, keys, luggage tags, bracelets and even a miniature harmonica dangling from the handles.
“She was unconventional,” says Hermes expert Michael Tonello, author of Bringing Home The Birkin and founder of smart fashion retailer Respoke. “Luxury goods were not particularly important to her.”
Although Jane’s bags were a bit battered, they fetched a fortune at auction – and now each one is probably worth a lot more.
Jane Birkin attends the ‘Jane Birkin sings Serge Gainsbourg ‘VIA JAPAN’ news conference at L’Institut Franco-Japonais de Tokyo in Tokyo March 26, 2013
“One of Jane’s real bags would fetch around £500,000 – if not more,” says Michael. “You would own a great piece of luxury fashion history.”
Where are the original Birkins today? SARAH RAINEY tracks down the most coveted handbags of all time.
The original – and an owner who rejected a pop star
Sometime in 1984, after her on-air conversation with Dumas, Jane walked into the Hermès atelier in Paris to purchase the bag she had helped design.
In lieu of payment, Dumas suggested that she lend the bag her last name. They also agreed on an annual royalty – about £42,000 as of today – which she donated to charity.
The original ‘It’ bag – copies of which cost £1,500 (£4,800 today) – lasted Jane for ten years. When a replacement was needed, Jane sold it at auction to an unnamed buyer in 1994 to support the fight against AIDS.
Six years later, it was back on the market, much to the delight of Catherine Benier, a collector of vintage Hermès and Chanel accessories and owner of Les Trois Marches de Catherine B, an exclusive Parisian vintage fashion boutique, who had previously narrowly missed the bag.
Catherine, an elegant French woman with flaming hair who is far too chic to reveal her age, counts model Linda Evangelista, pop star Rihanna and Dumas herself among her clients and has some of the world’s rarest designer bags and 2,500 silk scarves at her disposal.
Speaking to the Mail this week, she reveals she was made aware of the sale by a friend at a Paris auction house. “When I came to visit, she took a bag out of a safe. It was one I had seen a thousand times in photographs on Jane Birkin’s arm. I said, “It can’t be the bag.”
“I could not imagine that this wonderful object did not belong to me.”
Jane sketched the bag she envisioned on a medical bag, handed it to her traveling companion – and the rest is history
To maintain her anonymity, she offered by phone. “I wasn’t in the room.” Only the auctioneer knew my name. Many famous personalities as well as museum directors were present. Nobody knew I was the lucky winner. “The joy I felt when the hammer fell is indescribable.”
On the outside, the bag is unremarkable: plain black leather, with the initials “JB” embossed on the front, a gold clasp and remnants of Unicef and Médecins du Monde stickers that Jane stuck on the front and sides. Unlike later versions, it features a shoulder strap.
Catherine doesn’t reveal how much she paid (estimated to be in the six figures) but simply says, ‘This bag is iconic.’ Do symbols have a price?’
Nor will she say where it is today, only that it is being held securely under lock and key.
She won’t use it as a purse, nor part with it, despite asking for it multiple times (and at horrendous sums). She even turned down an offer from Rihanna. “I imagine the situations the bag experiences, the travels and the places visited. I inhale the almost gone scent of perfume. I enjoy imagining these wonderful stories.
“When you buy a bag like this, you buy the whole story behind it.”
Catherine recalls the many times she met Jane Birkin in the chic St-Germain-des-Prés district of Paris: “She was down to earth and incredibly friendly.” “Our exchanges were always friendly and polite.”
Jane Birkin arrives at Narita International Airport on April 5, 2011 in Narita, Japan
Since then the bag has been exhibited in department stores and museums in London, Paris and New York.
The sticker covered bag that sold on eBay for £104.00
A decade later, in 2011, another of Jane’s distressed black leather Birkins was listed on online auction site eBay as part of a charity event raising money for Red Cross disaster relief efforts in Japan.
Worn daily by its namesake for more than five years, the bag bore all the hallmarks of a well-loved (and well-travelled) accessory: stickers from a concert where she sang for Haiti earthquake survivors; a portrait of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from her time in Burma; Worry beads, friendship bracelets and metal trinkets from their world travel adventures.
Jane said of the versatile embellishments, “I’m always hanging things on my bags because I don’t like them looking like everyone else’s.”
The hardware was tarnished and the leather scuffed, but minutes after it went online the bag – in an auction featuring Katy Perry and Coldplay items – had fetched bids in excess of £1,500.
It was sold to an anonymous bidder for £104,164 – the highest lot in the entire A-List auction – and has not been seen since.
Six years later, it was back on the market, much to the delight of Catherine Benier, a collector of vintage Hermès and Chanel accessories and owner of Les Trois Marches de Catherine B, an exclusive Parisian vintage fashion boutique, who had previously narrowly missed the bag
The least used of the five specimens and a charity auction
Unlike her other distressed donations, the third bag of Jane’s for sale in 2020 looked pristine. She didn’t like breaking in a new Birkin. In her words, “It’s not dirty enough and there aren’t any stickers on it.” The surface will be scratched soon.’
In this case, her Birkin wasn’t nearly as badly scratched as the others.
The leather remained supple and shiny, the lining was soft, and the rose gold lock and keys were included, along with a dust bag, rain cover, strap, and box.
The 35cm black ‘Togo’ Birkin was sold at auction for Smart Works, a charity helping unemployed women find work of which Meghan Markle is a patron, along with donations from Victoria Beckham, Kate Moss, Kylie Minogue and Dame Shirley Bassey.
It continued to fetch more than any other item and was looted by a private bidder for £35,000, more than triple the estimate. Jane promised to sign it after the sale.
Bite marks from her cat and a Tipp-Ex autograph
Perhaps the ultimate original Birkin – and certainly the most expensive – came under the hammer at London auction house Bonhams just two years ago.
This bag – a black leather Togo 35 from 1999 – was sold by Jane herself at an auction for Anno’s Africa, a charity commemorating her late nephew, to an anonymous bidder in 2014 and was exhibited by its second owner in Shanghai two years later (alongside Grace Kelly’s Hermes bag “Kelly”).
The version released in 2021 still had a piece of red cord tied around a handle, as well as bite marks from Jane’s cat. Jane made no apologies for her pet’s fondness for handbags. “It’s no fun in a bag unless you twirl it around so it looks like the cat has been sitting on it – and it usually is,” she said in an interview. “Maybe even the cat is in there!”
The body of Jane Birkin (pictured in December last year) was found by one of her carers at her home in Paris on Sunday after she expressed her desire to spend Saturday night alone
This particular model was accompanied by a letter from Jane, which she signed on the inside in Tipp-Ex format. It sparked a bitter bidding war in the Knightsbridge auction rooms, which erupted in applause when it sold for £119,000, five times its pre-sale estimate.
Here, too, the owner remained anonymous. And the bag hasn’t surfaced since.
Mysterious Fifth Bag… and Others That May Remain in Her Will?
With the exception of Catherine, the owners of the original Birkins have kept their identities secret. Given the value of the bags, it’s no wonder collectors do this, says Michael Tonello.
“People are concerned about their personal safety,” he says. “Over the years we’ve seen in the news of thieves crashing their cars through the fronts of Hermes stores to smack off designer goods.”
He thinks it is unlikely that the bags will be used by their owners: “They will stand in a glass cube and be displayed like works of art in the owners’ homes.”
A similar destination seems likely for a mysterious fifth bag that Jane revealed on Japanese television in 2008 and which she sold for victims of the 1999 Taiwan earthquake. The auction, believed to have taken place in Asia, has never been made public and the buyer is top secret.
This raises the intriguing possibility that she may have had more bags than she cares to admit — and may even have gifted a bag or two to the family or included others in her will.
Jane seemed to shrug it off in 2011: “My daughter Lou doesn’t have one.” I personally would hate getting a Birkin bag from your mom.”
However, many would have disagreed.
And since their namesake is no longer with us, the value of the original Birkins is at an all-time high: so if you own one, now is the time to sell, sell, sell.
Michael says, “I would trade anything I own for one of Jane’s real Birkin bags.” And so we wait. . .’