The original Birkin bag sold for $10.1 million at Sotheby’s, setting a new record for handbags.
In the mid-1980s, when Jane Birkin was (merely) a singer, actress, and model, her items spilled onto the floor during a flight, and she lamented to a fellow passenger — who happened to be Hermès CEO Jean-Louis Dumas — that women’s handbags weren’t larger.
He sketched out a more practical design to her tastes, and an icon was born: Birkin bags have since commanded yearslong waiting lists and price tags in the tens of thousands.
Monogrammed with a “J.B.,” the original is the “starting point of an extraordinary story,” a Sotheby’s official told the BBC.
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