Overview

• The bag fetched €8,582,500 at Sotheby’s Paris on July 10, establishing a world-record price for any handbag at auction.
• Hermès chief Jean Louis Dumas sketched the original prototype in 1984 during a Paris–London flight after Jane Birkin lamented the lack of a practical carryall.
• Distinctive elements like its nonremovable shoulder strap, brass fixtures, closed metal rings, integrated nail file and Birkin’s engraved initials were never reproduced.
• Jane Birkin used the handbag for almost ten years before donating it to an AIDS research fundraiser in 1994, after which collector Catherine Bernier acquired it in 2000.
• Prior to the Paris sale, the prototype featured in exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria & Albert Museum, Sotheby’s Paris in October 2024 and Sotheby’s Hong Kong in April 2025.