An Origin Story For The World’s Most Exclusive Bag

For more than a decade, singer and actress Jane Birkin carried a wicker Portuguese basket as a handbag, one she’d found at a market in London. The basket went everywhere Jane did; from the grocery store to the red carpet at Cannes, Birkin’s basket was a whole thing.

Though she lived most of her adult life in Paris, Birkin was British by birth. She began her career as an actress and model during the height of the Swinging Sixties, starring in movies like Blow-Up (1966, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni) and Wonderwall (1968, directed by Joe Massot), and it was while filming Pierre Grimblat’s Slogan, (1969), that Birkin met and fell in love with Serge Gainsbourg. She moved to Paris to be with him, and this is where and when launched her musical career. Singing would be part of the rest of Birkin’s life. Gainsbourg would not.

Serge was, by all accounts, impossible to live with and violent at times, and Jane took their daughter (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and left him in 1980, the same year she met Jacques Doillon, who Birkin stayed with until about 1996.

According to fashion history lore, by 1983 Doillon was sick of seeing the basket, decided it was a gimmick Jane did not need, and ran the purse over with his car.

The timing could not have been worse for his tantrum, Birkin was to fly from Paris to London that same day. She grabbed another bag, which she later described to the press as, “a sort of a camel stomach or something horrid.”

After boarding her flight, doing all the little things one does to settle in, the substitute bag spilled; her diary and its agenda case, notes, photos of Birkin’s daughters, all the detritus of a lady’s handbag. Her seatmate, a rather tidy looking gentleman, noted that it was a shame the bag she carried did not have pockets to organize and contain her things. Supposedly, Birkin responded:

“Well, what can I do when Hermès doesn’t make one with pockets?”

To which her seatmate apparently replied:

“I am Hermès.”

The gentleman was Jean-Louis Dumas, then the chairman and creative director of the luxury brand, and great-great grandson of company founder Thierry Hermès. He told the singer that if she would be kind enough to lend him her case, he would make one for her and make it to suit her exact needs.

Birkin asked Dumas if he could make a version of the Kelly bag, only four times the size, drawing what she wanted on a napkin for him. About a month later Birkin got a call, a cardboard mockup of her bag was ready, waiting at Hermès when it was convenient for her to come by.

When she came to see the progress, Birkin learned that the petit mains, the “little hands” who do leatherwork for couture accessories, who had created the bag from her drawing, were close to obsessed with the design. Would Jane mind if Hermès produced the bag and named it after her?

At this time, the only named bag at Hermès was the Kelly bag, named for Princess Grace Kelly, who was once an A-List movie star and Hitchcock heroine. Unsurprisingly, Jane was rather flattered to be in such company. Birkin selected the grade of leather, the clasps and closures she preferred, and gave Hermès permission to name the purse after her.

A year later, in 1984, Hermès officially launched the Birkin bag.

When Jane Birkin died in July of 2023, her namesake handbag was world famous, and had spent decades as one of the most expensive and exclusive purses in the world. Jane was regularly asked about the Birkin bag for the rest of her life.

“The last question from any reporter is always about the bag. But it’s no bother, how can it be? Because of the bag, even these days when frankly I make no effort whatsoever, I am still something in fashion, and I think I can thank the bag for that.”

The Birkin is the most famous bag in the world. But if it Jacques Doillon hadn’t thrown a fit over a perceived gimmick, it may never have existed.

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