Jane's Birkin has sold for $8.6 million but are we finally growing tired of the Hermès icon?

When a well-used handbag sells for $8.6 million, it is tempting to ask: “has the world gone crazy?”.

In the 40-plus years since actress, singer and style icon Jane Birkin asked Jean-Louis Dumas of the Hermès dynasty to help her out with a suitable bag for a young mother, the world has indeed gone crazy for the result, which was named Birkin in her honour.

The bag, together with the luxury French brand, became a deity with global consumers begging to drop tens, if not hundreds, of thousands on them.

In 1984, when Jane complained she couldn’t find a bag that worked for her when travelling with her daughter (her signature basket was impractical), Hermès was of course a well-known name and quality maker of bags, but it hadn’t become a religion, which is what it feels like now. Fashion was a completely different landscape in the early 1980s; bags didn’t have waitlists and they were way more affordable in real terms.

When the gavel recently came down at Sotheby’s for €8.6m with fees for Jane’s original Birkin – she first sold it for a French AIDS charity’s benefit in 1994 and the latest owner chose to remain anonymous – many in the luxury resale market saw this as a validation of their industry, stating on social media that status bags were a trusted and guaranteed investment. But this is like saying the sale of Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi is testament to the appeal of the general antiques market.

Birkin’s Birkin is an anomaly. It’s a one-off. A prototype. It is indeed like an original piece of art. Of course, the value of this item has gone up because of the general fame of the Birkin bag, but this is the very first one, and therefore extremely special and extremely coveted. A collector in Japan is said to be the new owner.

Jane Birkin's original bag that was sold for $8.6 million (Alamy/PA)

Look at it. It has been heavily used. Enjoyed. It is almost sticky. It goes against everything the resell market tells you and expects you to do, which is to keep your bags pristine if you want them to retain their value (or even gain some). Birkin’s Birkin is a piece of history – it’s not just a piece of constructed leather that we are told to worship – and it is worth a lot of money
Birkin bags are now so revered they are no longer enjoyed. They’ve become almost useless. They are collector’s items and no longer fashion items.

Humorously meme-ed to be a better investment than the stock market, the Birkin bag has become, like a Rolex watch, unquestioned in its long-term value. If you can’t buy a new one (and very few people are allowed to due to the strict control Hermès places on their sale) you have no choice but to buy one on the secondary market, often at a huge mark-up on the original price. However, It only retains a higher value while people remain believers.

Jane Birkin was known for her signature baskets before Hermès made a bag in her honour (PA Archive)

And, paradoxically, at the time when the most valuable fashion accessory in Europe has just been sold, it is time to ask whether we are over the Birkin? What is the point of owning a bag so valuable you are afraid to use it and leave the house with it?

Influencer Lydia Millen hit the headlines recently for offloading her entire designer bag collection, including an Hermès Birkin and its almost-as-famous sister bag, the Kelly. Millen said she felt unsafe carrying the bags around London and felt a target for thieves when she did so. Instead of bringing joy, they brought her a whole load of stress, and she’s now carrying the much more realistically priced Mulberry Bayswater (often referred to as ‘the British Birkin’).

For now though, the Birkin remains top of the tree for a resale industry that has become bloated on hysteria, greenwashing and designer names. The resale industry likes the Birkin because of its higher value, and, using simple business maths, when your model is based on selling one-of-one, the higher the value, the more profitable it is. Because of this, resale is a very difficult business to scale, as many are finding out.

Like Millen, many resellers are also finding that holding stocks of luxury bags makes them a target for thieves too. Pre-eminent luxury reseller Sellier was targeted by thieves who stole £500,000 in designer items in under four minutes last November. A similar raid on reseller Luxe Collective was cited as the reason the business had to close down earlier this year. Phoenix Style also hit the headlines recently when its store in Cobham, Surrey was raided by thieves, only to have the same thing happen at its Wimbledon branch a day later.

While those thieves weren’t targeting the Birkin alone, this bag is overexposed and could be the canary in the coalmine for resale. Just because somebody says something is worth a certain value, you won’t know that is true until you try to sell it. Good luck with that!

Not everything with a designer name can command a designer price, especially as prices in the primary and the secondary market have risen so much over the past few years. On top of this, fashion ebbs and flows. While in recent years it has been seen as cool to wear one of these bags, people are now starting to comment on social media that they are looking out of date and are questioning why people care so much about them anyway.

Birkin bags, at high prices, are now gathering dust online as sellers are unwilling to accept that values are falling. Birkins will probably retain their value better than most, when compared to other brands, but Jane’s Birkin is a freak. It delivered a ridiculous return for one collector and it was the result of the best chance encounter Hermès could had ever have wished for.