In a bidding war for a piece of luxury history, one of the world’s richest people just lost out.
The original Birkin bag, owned and inspired by the late actress Jane Birkin, sold at a Sotheby’s auction in Paris last night for USD 10.1 million with fees. The bidding opened at USD 1 million, and a 10-minute battle ensued between nine people before a private collector in Japan made the winning offer. A source with knowledge of the sale told Robb Report on background that Lauren Sánchez was the person just outbid in the end. Sotheby’s offered no comment on the sale.
Sanchez’ representatives reached out to Robb Report via email on Thursday evening and denied that she had bid on the Birkin, describing the story as “completely false.”
The sale broke numerous records, including the most expensive handbag ever sold at auction (set in 2021 by a USD 5,13,040 Hermès Kelly), the most valuable fashion item sold at auction in Europe, and the costliest luxury item ever sold at Sotheby’s Paris.
The scuffed and well-worn bag, a prototype created for Birkin, is the only one of its kind with a non-removable shoulder strap and attached nail clipper, illustrative of the bohemian effortlessness that garnered Birkin her fame.
It is also embossed with her initials, “J.B.,” and was presented in the exact condition in which it was last used by Birkin herself. Faint adhesive marks even linger on the leather—residue from the stickers she would put on the bag in support of causes such as Médecins du Monde and Unicef.
The British-born actress and singer, who died in 2023, conceived of the Birkin’s design at a chance meeting with Jean-Louis Dumas, then-chairman of Hermès, in 1984 on a flight from Paris to London. Birkin was travelling with her young daughter and complained to Dumas that she couldn’t find a handbag big enough for her daily life.
Birkin drew up her ideal design on an aeroplane paper bag, envisioning an expansion of the Hermès Kelly with an open top, additional pockets, and larger size to fit the hectic quotidian affairs of a young mother. Dumas resolved to create it for the actress, offering her the original bag a year later and asking permission to call it by her name.
Neither could anticipate that Birkin’s offhanded sketch would eventually become one of the most recognised luxury items in the world.
Hermès gave Birkin four iterations of the eponymous bag over the course of her life and offered her royalties from the name, which she reportedly donated to charities each year.
The original bag first left Birkin’s hands in 1994, when she herself sold it to benefit AIDS research. In the years following, the Birkin appeared in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Its previous owner purchased the iconic bag at an auction in 2000, identified by Sotheby’s only as Catherine B.
“It is a startling demonstration of the power of a legend,” Morgane Halimi, Sotheby’s global head of handbags and fashion, said of the sale in a press release. “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.”
And one, it seems, that Sánchez will have to keep coveting.
