The Birkin bag is an icon thanks to Jane Mirkin and Jean-Louis Dumas, the president of Hermès. Since this crossover between the luxury and fashion industries, the bag has gained such fame that one was auctioned at Sotheby’s in Paris for a huge sum. Shinsuke Sakimoto, the head of Valuence Holdings, was the one who finally acquired the bag and is considering exhibiting it at the Museum of Modern Art or the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Vogue also points out that, in addition to being a benchmark in the fashion world, it has also been a benchmark in luxury auctions. Read on to find out more.
When everything started
In 1984, Jane Birkin, the iconic English singer, actress and model, was flying back to London. She placed her Hermès Kelly handbag into the locker up her head and all in it fell on the floor.
As luck would have it, Hermès chairman Jean-Louis Dumas was just there on the flight and listened intently as Birkin pleaded for a bag with a bigger, less structured design, such as the woven Portuguese basket she normally carried.
“I said, ‘Why don’t you make a bag that’s sort of four times the Kelly, that you could leave open?’” she explained to Vogue in a 2020 interview. She then sketched her idea for the bag on a handy airplane vomit bag.
Dumas got interest by the idea and ordered the bag made, with the first one created given to Birkin. Made from simplistic black leather and engraved with the initials J.B., it would go everywhere with Birkin until she sold it in 1994 to benefit AIDS research.
The Birkin bag has gone from strength to strength since its creation. Currently available in a range of fabrics and colors, the prices range from $10,000 to $500,000 new — and that’s if you can get one, as Hermès is known to restrain sales to loyal customers.
Original Birkin bag up for sale
That original Birkin bag has just been sold, for a record-breaking quantity of money, in what was a unreal auction. The nine-way bidding battle at Sotheby’s Paris auction house began with an opening offer of one million euros (close to $1.1 million), which already made the handbag the most expensive ever put up for auction.
The bag would end up costing seven million euros, with fees bringing the total price for the 40-year-old bag to $10.1 million.
The person bought the original Birkin bag
The intrigue phone bidder turned out to be Japanese businessman Shinsuke Sakimoto, the CEO of luxury resale company Valuence Holdings, who just spoke to CNN. As a resale business, the acquisition of used items is the bread and butter of Sakimoto’s operation, even if this was the most high-prized purchase he has ever made for just one item.
However, as to exactly why Sakimoto made the big winning bid for the Birkin, the respond is easy:
“it’s an investment, one he believes will pay back in several ways”.
In first place, Sakimoto estimates the publicity from winning the auction and buying the famous first Birkin will be worth millions in advertising value over the next decade.
“It was certain that the winning bid would break the record, which meant it would be reported all over the world. Everyone agreed and understood that this was a good investment,” he explained.
And in the meantime Valuence does buy and resell handbags, usually for thousands of dollars, that’s not what the company plans to do with the original Birkin. Rather, they awai to put it on public display. Every time the Birkin has been exhibited, whether at the Museum of Modern Art in New York or London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, it has drawn thousands of visitors.
“The purpose of winning this artwork is not to make it the personal property of the wealthy, but to create a new ownership model — for companies like ours and society to share, together,” Sakimoto said, adding: “We want to preserve it in the future and share it with everyone.”