From everyday basket to $10.1 million Hermès Birkin: How Jane Birkin’s everyday bag became a luxury icon

The Birkin bag has long been a coveted name among women and fashion enthusiasts, with its exclusivity, craftsmanship and eye-watering prices turning it into one of the world's most recognisable luxury handbags. But the story of the bag began with something far less glamorous: a cheap straw basket that Jane Birkin carried everywhere.

Birkin used the basket for grocery shopping, to collect her newspaper and even took it to Cannes and a pro-choice rally in Paris in 1972. It was practical, oversized and usually packed with her belongings.

"I was well known for carrying a basket," Birkin said in a 2018 interview, as quoted by Gulf News. "So I obviously knew girls liked to have masses of things in their handbag."

That habit eventually inspired the handbag that would carry her name and become a multimillion-dollar collector's item.

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The flight that inspired the Birkin

The idea for the bag emerged during an Air France flight when Birkin was travelling with her daughter Charlotte. Her basket was placed in the overhead locker, but its contents spilled out and landed in the lap of the man sitting beside her.

The man was Jean-Louis Dumas, who ran Hermès.

Birkin told him that there was no bag large enough for everything she needed. She wanted one roughly half the size of her suitcase. Dumas asked her to sketch her idea, and she used the air sickness bag in the seat pocket because there was no paper available.

The resulting design was meant to be functional. Hermès says it included a dedicated compartment for her baby's bottles.

A few years later, the first prototype arrived. It was a one-of-a-kind bag with Birkin's initials stamped below the lock.

How Jane Birkin actually used her Birkin

Birkin's relationship with the bag was very different from the way Birkins are treated today.

She carried the original almost every day from 1985 to 1994, filling it with her belongings and even hanging nail clippers from it. She covered it with stickers for Médecins du Monde and UNICEF and decorated it with beads and worry beads collected from Greece, Israel and Palestine.

The leather was left scuffed, scratched and stained.

"There's no fun in a bag if it's not kicked around so that it looks as if the cat's been sitting on it, and it usually has," she said. "The cat may even be in it."

She also had little interest in treating the Birkin as a precious luxury object.

"A Birkin bag is a very good rain hat. Just put everything else in a plastic bag."

By 2017, Birkin told the BBC that she rarely used one because carrying it filled with everyday belongings made it too heavy.

"Now I fill my pockets like a man, because then you don't actually have to carry anything."

The original Birkin became a multimillion-dollar collectible

In 1994, Birkin donated the original bag to raise money for an AIDS charity. She continued using her personal Birkins to raise money for causes she supported, including Amnesty International.

She also challenged Hermès over its products. In 2015, she asked the fashion house to remove her name from the crocodile version of the Birkin after learning about practices involved in its production. The company subsequently reviewed them.

More than three decades after the Birkin was created, its value had moved far beyond its original purpose.

At Sotheby's in Paris on 10 July 2025, the prototype sold for €8.6 million, around $10.1 million with fees.

Bidding opened at €1 million and ran for ten minutes across nine collectors before the hammer fell at €7 million. The sale surpassed the previous record for a handbag, $513,040, paid in 2021 for a diamond-set crocodile Kelly.

Only the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz have sold for more as a piece of fashion at auction. The buyer was a private collector in Japan.

For consumers looking to buy a Birkin rather than bid on a piece of fashion history, prices are considerably lower but still firmly in luxury territory. Retail Birkins now start around $10,000, while Sotheby's resells them for up to $220,000.

A 2016 study found that the bag had outperformed both the S&P 500 and gold, further strengthening its reputation as a luxury asset.

Another personal Birkin sells for $2.9 million

The market for Jane Birkin's personal bags has continued beyond the original prototype.

In December, Le Birkin Voyageur, another bag from her collection that she carried daily between 2003 and 2007, sold in Abu Dhabi for $2.9 million.

The prices underline how dramatically the Birkin has evolved from a practical handbag into a collectible whose value is closely tied to its history, rarity and connection to its namesake.

Jane Birkin died in July 2023, at 76.

The handbag she inspired remains one of the most recognisable symbols of luxury fashion — even though Birkin herself treated it much more like the humble basket that inspired it than the investment piece it has become today.