Original Birkin bag sells at auction for record €8.6m
The price was the highest on record for a fashion item, it said.
'It was a travel bag. Clearly it was worn for nine years by Jane Birkin on a daily basis and the form is very beautiful,' Aurelie Vassy, head of the handbags and fashion department at Sotheby's Europe and Middle East, told Reuters.
Birkin auctioned the bag in 1994 to support Sidaction, a French charity that fights HIV/Aids.
In 2000, when it went on sale again, a private French collector bought it.
When British-born Birkin died in 2023, the French capital's mayor, Anne Hidalgo, said the 'most Parisian of the English has left us'.
Birkin had lived in her adopted France since the late 1960s and was remembered as much for her warmth and campaigning as for her acting and singing, most famously on the hit single Je t'aime...moi non plus .
Reuters
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