The Original Hermès Birkin Bag Prototype Just Sold for Over $10 Million

If you thought buying a new Birkin was an expense, the bag that just sold at Sotheby’s blew the usual six-figure price out of the water. Of course, this was no run-of-the-mill Birkin, but the original prototype once owned by the iconic accessory’s namesake, Jane Birkin. On Thursday, the 40-year-old bag sold for £8.6 million (or $10.1 million), breaking the record as the most expensive handbag ever sold at auction.

No, it wasn’t Kim Kardashian who snapped up this one, but an anonymous buyer from Japan. Bidding began at €1 million ($1.7 million), quickly eclipsing the previous handbag record holder, the White Himalaya Niloticus Crocodile Diamond Retourne Kelly 28, which sold for $513,040 in November 2021. The bag is now also the most expensive fashion item to sell in Europe (in the U.S. that title is held by the ruby red slippers from Wizard of Oz, which sold for $32.5 million in 2024) and the most valuable luxury item every sold at Sotheby’s Paris.

Ten million dollars is quite a price tag, but this isn’t just any bag, it’s a bag that kicked off a movement. Many have heard the story—Jane was on a flight when she found herself complaining to Jean-Louis Dumas that she couldn’t find a bag with enough room to fit her everyday essentials. Dumas, the Hermés director at the time, was just the man to help. In 1985, he designed a bag to solve her problem and offered her the prototype, asking permission to name the creation after her.

Birkin held on to the bag for only nine years before donating it to the French AIDS charity, Association Solidarité Sida, in 1994. In 2000, it was purchased by Parisian collector Catherine Benier. It went on display twice in the years ahead of the auction, as part of the Museum of Modern Art’s Items: Is Fashion Modern? exhibition in 2018, and Bags Inside Out at the Victoria & Albert Museum two years later. More recently, the original Birkin went on a bit of a tour, spending time at Sotheby’s flagship location in New York for a few days before heading to the auction house’s Paris galleries.

Over the years, the Birkin has become a cultural mainstay with references in dozens of songs, major placement in every A-lister’s closet, and impressive staying power and adaptability to trends. Now, the Birkin comes in multiple sizes, finishes, and varieties. The Birkin at auction, though, doesn’t fit into the modern Hermés catalogue. Its status as a prototype means it’s completely unique in many ways. It’s not a typical size, but a mix of the modern 35 and 40. The bag also features gilded brass hardware, which has since been replaced by gold-plated hardware, as well as options of rose gold, palladium, or ruthenium. The most unique thing about the bag, though, is likely its shoulder strap, which was ditched when the design went into production, making it the only Birkin ever to have a non-removable strap. It also features Birkin’s initials on the front flap.

Aside from a nail clip hanging on the inside, the bag was sold without the various accouterments Jane used to place on her bag, a practice that has since resurfaced in the past year. Let’s hope this new buyer doesn’t put a Labubu on this piece of fashion history.