Jane Birkin’s original Hermès bag is up for auction in Paris

By Canadian Press on July 10, 2025.

PARIS (AP) — Sketched out on an airplane vomit sack, it became fashion’s must-have accessory.

The original Birkin bag, named after the actor and singer that Hermès created it for — the late Jane Birkin — is up for auction in Paris on Thursday.

The so-called Original Birkin is expected to fetch hundreds of thousands of euros (dollars) at the sale by auction house Sotheby’s.

Created for the London-born star and fashion icon by the Paris fashion house in 1984, the Birkin bag became one of the world’s most exclusive luxury items, with its extravagant price tag and years-long waiting list.

The fashion accessory was born of a fortuitous encounter on a London-bound flight in the 1980s with the then head of Hermès, Jean-Louis Dumas. Birkin recounted in subsequent interviews that the pair got talking after she spilled some of her things on the cabin floor.

Birkin asked Dumas why Hermès didn’t make a bigger handbag and sketched out on an airplane vomit sack the sort of bag that she would like. He then had an example made for her and, flattered, she agreed when Hermès asked whether it could commercialize the bag in her name.

The bag became so famous that Birkin once mused before her death in 2023 at age 76 that obituaries for her would likely “say, ‘Like the bag’ or something,’” adding: “Well, it could be worse.”

The Associated Press