In an iconic moment for fashion history, the original Hermès Birkin bag once owned and carried by the Jane Birkin herself recently sold for a whopping €8.6 million (approximately $10.1 million) at Sotheby’s Fashion Icons auction in Paris on July 10, 2025. The winning bidder? A private collector from Japan, represented by Valuence International, a Tokyo-based auction house.
This isn’t just any Birkin – it’s the Birkin, as in, it’s the very first prototype gifted to Jane Birkin in 1984 after her now-famous conversation with the then CEO of Hermès, Jean-Louis Dumas, on a flight from Paris to London.
As the story goes, Birkin, who was a young mom at the time, had some of her items spill out of her bag onto the cabin floor, prompting her to question Dumas as of to why Hermès didn’t make bigger bags. All the woman wanted was a handsome bag that was also fully functional!
Dumas, then, had her sketch a design of the kind of all-in-one bag she was envisioning on an airplane, and thus, the Birkin was born.
Crafted in black leather with gold hardware and the initials “J.B.” subtly embossed, this particular bag was worn by Birkin daily throughout the 1980s and into the ’90s. While many treat their Birkins like precious cargo, Birkin customized hers freely, adding stickers, keychains, a nail clipper, and even badges to support various causes.
“There’s no fun in a bag if it’s not kicked around,” she told Vogue in 2012. “You can put your whole life in it.”
In 1994, Birkin auctioned the bag to raise funds for AIDS research. It eventually ended up with Catherine B., a French luxury collector, who treasured it for over two decades. Now, Sotheby’s has sold it as part of a high-profile auction featuring fashion artifacts tied to legends like Karl Lagerfeld and Princess Diana.
The bag was previewed in New York before its Paris debut, where it saw a 10-minute bidding war between nine global collectors. It easily beat the previous world record for any handbag sold at auction, which was $513,000 for a diamond-studded Hermès Kelly back in 2021.
Sotheby’s described the sale as “a powerful tribute to Jane Birkin’s legacy,” not just as a style icon, but as a cultural figure whose influence turned a handbag into a symbol of status, individuality, and myth.
Birkin, who passed away in 2023, often downplayed the bag’s cult status. “I only ever had one at a time,” she once said. “Because one is already quite enough.”
Apparently, one is also now worth over $10 million.
Also read: Our Favorite Female-Owned Handbag Brands You Need to Know About
