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A 40-year-old worn-in Hermès Birkin bag has become the most valuable handbag ever sold at auction.
Bidders battled for 10 minutes on Thursday for the original Birkin worn by its muse, Jane Birkin. It ended in a $10.1 million sale to a private collector in Japan who bid via telephone. In a video of the live auction, gasps can be heard as the war waged on.
“The spectacular sale of the Original Hermès Birkin today at Sotheby’s Paris marks an important milestone in the history of fashion and the luxury industry more widely,” Morgane Halimi, global head of handbags and fashion at Sotheby’s, said in a statement.
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The Birkin, a highly coveted status symbol among the wealthy, was inspired by the late singer-actor after a conversation with Jean-Louis Dumas — who was chairman of Hermès at the time — on an airplane in 1981, Jane told Vogue in 2012.
She drew the design on an airplane sickness bag and eventually went on to carry the prototype for nearly a decade. It last went up for auction 25 years ago, Sotheby’s said.
This time around, bidding opened at $1.7 million. It “made me relive my own bidding battle, 25 years ago, and how raw and indescribable the feeling of winning over this wonderful bag was,” the bag’s previous owner, Catherine B., said in a statement released by Sotheby’s.
The Birkin bag is a staple for Hermès. It starts at around $10,000 and has a long, unofficial vetting process to purchase.
The prototype unseated the Hermès White Himalaya Niloticus Crocodile Diamond Retourne Kelly 28 bag, which sold for a record $513,040 at auction in 2021.
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