
World's most expensive Birkin bag fetches $10 million in Paris
The modern design classic, owned by a well-known Paris-based handbag collector, sparked a telephone bidding war up to €7 million, with the final sale price set at 8.58 million with commission and fees, the Sotheby's website showed.
The previous record sale price for a handbag at auction was set by a diamond- and white gold-encrusted crocodile skin Hermes Kelly 28 which fetched nearly $513,000 in 2021 at Christie's in Hong Kong.
"After weeks of anticipation, the bidding opened at 1 million euros — prompting a gasp from the room," Sotheby's said in a statement.
Sotheby's had advised that the Birkin prototype was expected to set records.
But the staggering price tag is in keeping with the fashion world's recent flashy aesthetics.
After years of so-called "quiet luxury" dominating catwalks, designers have embraced more ostentatious looks in recent seasons that have been dubbed "boom boom" by some trend forecasters.
The identity of the buyer has not been revealed so far.
Fashion legend
The original Birkin has changed hands twice since being put up for sale by Birkin at an auction in 1994 where the proceeds went to an acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (Aids) charity, according to Sotheby's.
Thursday's seller, Catherine Benier, who has a boutique in the upmarket 6th district in Left Bank Paris, told The New York Times before the sale that the bag was the "jewel in my collection".
The birth of the bag has become a modern fashion legend.
During a Paris–London flight, the singer and actress -- who died in 2023 -- complained to a fellow traveller about not being able to find a bag suited to her needs as a young mother.
That fellow passenger happened to be Jean-Louis Dumas, then head of Hermes.
The result of their conversation was a spacious tote with room for baby bottles, created in 1984 and named the Birkin.
It is engraved with the initials J.B. and has several unique features, including closed metal rings, a non-detachable shoulder strap and a built-in nail clipper.
Its condition "reflects the many years of use by the actress and singer," Sotheby's said beforehand.
A slightly differently sized version of the original has become the flagship product of the immensely profitable family-owned luxury French leather goods maker ever since.
Produced in very limited numbers, the bag has maintained an aura of exclusivity and is beloved by celebrities from Khloe Kardashian, Jennifer Lopez to Victoria Beckham.
Frustrated fashionistas in America even sued Hermes in a class-action suit in California last year after they were refused access to the bags.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles

Bangkok Post
4 days ago
- Bangkok Post
BTS agency HYBE raided over alleged fraud trading
SEOUL — HYBE, the agency behind Korean pop (K-pop) superstars BTS, was raided by police on Thursday in connection with alleged fraudulent trading involving its founder Bang Si-hyuk, investigators said. "We are conducting a search and seizure at HYBE's headquarters in Yongsan District," Seoul police said in a brief statement. Bang, the mastermind behind BTS, is under investigation over allegations that he misled early investors to reap illicit profits from the company's 2020 initial public offering. He is accused of gaining around 200 billion won (US$146 million) through the process, according to local reports. HYBE has denied Bang committed any wrongdoing. "We will dutifully clarify that the listing at the time was carried out in compliance with all relevant laws and regulations," the company said in early July, pledging "active cooperation" with authorities to get to the bottom of the case. Bang allegedly misled HYBE's early investors, who held pre-IPO shares, by telling them in 2019 he had no plans to take the company public. He then allegedly encouraged them to sell their shares to private equity funds when in fact IPO plan was in the making. HYBE went public in 2020, after the shareholders sold their stakes. The 52-year-old is accused of secretly striking a deal with the private equity funds to receive a portion of the profits they made from selling shares after the initial public offering (IPO). 2026 comeback The investigation comes as all seven BTS members complete their mandatory military service and prepare for a comeback next year. HYBE announced this month that a new album and world tour were scheduled for 2026. BTS, known for championing progressive causes, holds the record as the most-streamed group on Spotify and became the first K-pop act to top both the Billboard 200 and Billboard Artist 100 charts in the United States. Before their military service, BTS generated more than 5.5 trillion won ($4 billion) in yearly economic impact, according to the Korea Culture and Tourism Institute. That accounts for roughly 0.2%of South Korea's total GDP, according to official data. There had been debate over whether BTS should be granted exemptions from military service -- sometimes granted to Olympic medallists and classical artists who win top international awards -- but pop stars do not qualify under South Korean laws.

Bangkok Post
4 days ago
- Bangkok Post
Wax lyrical: Taylor Swift gets lucky 13 Madame Tussauds statues
LONDON — US pop megastar Taylor Swift will be honoured with 13 waxworks of her at Madame Tussauds venues around the globe, the museum said on Wednesday. In honour of Swift's lucky number, 13 of the waxwork museum's 22 branches will each receive a statue of the " Love Story" and " Blank Space" singer, in what it called the "most ambitious project" of its 250-year history. The statues were inspired by some of the 35-year-old songwriting sensation's looks from her record-shattering "Eras Tour" from 2023 to 2024. With 149 shows across the world over nearly two years, the tour raked in US$2 billion, making it the most lucrative in music history to date. More than 40 artists worked for more than a year on the statues of Swift, one of the most acclaimed artists of her generation with 14 Grammy Awards. "This is the most ambitious project in Madame Tussauds' 250-year history, which only feels right to reflect the stratospheric status of Taylor Swift," said Danielle Cullen, the museum's senior figure stylist. UK-based Swifties are well served, with one waxwork slated for London and another for the northern seaside resort town of Blackpool. Another 10 will find a permanent home at the branches of Madame Tussauds in Amsterdam, Berlin, Budapest, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Las Vegas, Nashville, New York, Orlando and Sydney. The thirteenth statue, which will travel around the remaining museums, will begin its worldwide walkabout with a residency at Madame Tussauds Shanghai.

Bangkok Post
5 days ago
- Bangkok Post
Versailles orchestra plays New York in 'Affair of the Poisons'
NEW YORK — Acrobatics, fortune tellers, opulent gowns and palace intrigue: the New York debut of the Versailles Royal Opera Orchestra was a performance befitting the era it recalls. Monday's immersive show " Versailles in Printemps: The Affair of the Poisons" centred on France's 17th-century period of excess and seediness that its creator, Andrew Ousley, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) has parallels to the present day. At the evening staged in Manhattan's new Printemps luxury emporium, guests and performers alike donned velvet waistcoats, silky corsets, feathered headdresses and powdered makeup. Core to the performance's tale was the discovery of arsenic, Ousley said -- the first "untraceable, untasteable poison." "Everybody was just poisoning everybody." And at the web's center? A midwife and fortune teller named La Voisin, he said, a "shadowy-like person who basically would peddle poison, peddle solutions, peddle snake oil." "She was the nexus," Ousley continued, in a scheme that "extended up to Louis XIV, his favorite mistresses" -- inner circles rife with backstabbing and murder plots. The poisoning scandal resulted in a tribunal that resulted in dozens of death sentences -- until the king called it off when it "got a little too close to home," Ousley said with a smile. "To me, it speaks to the present moment -- that this rot can fester underneath luxury and wealth when it's divorced from empathy, from humanity." Along with a program of classical music, the performance included elaborately costumed dancers, including one who tip-toed atop a line of wine bottles in sparkling platform heels. The drag opera artist Creatine Price was the celebrant of the evening's so-called " Black Mass," and told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that the night was "a beautiful way to sort of incorporate the ridiculousness, the campness, the farce of Versailles with a modern edge." Drag is "resistance," she said, adding that her act is "the essence of speaking truth to power, because it really flies in the face of everything in the opera that is standard, whether it's about gender or voice type." Period instruments The Versailles Royal Opera Orchestra formed in 2019, and its first stateside tour is underway: the series of shows kicked off at Festival Napa Valley in California before heading to New York. On Wednesday it will play another, more traditional show at L'Alliance New York, a French cultural center in Manhattan. The orchestra aims to champion repertoire primarily from the 17th and 18th centuries, and plays on period instruments. "Playing a historical instrument really gives me a feeling of being in contact with the era in which the music was composed," said Alexandre Fauroux, who plays the natural horn, a predecessor to the French horn distinguished by its lack of valves. Ousley runs the organisation Death of Classical, an arts non-profit that puts on classical shows in unexpected places, including the catacombs of Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery and crypts in Manhattan. Monday's spectacle included over-the-top performance, but Ousley emphasised that the evening was ultimately a celebration of classical artists. "These are players who play with such energy, to me it's more like a rock band than an orchestra," he said. "When you can sit and feel, with a group of strangers, something that you know you feel together -- that's why I work, because of that shared connection, experience and transcendence."