Jane Birkin in the 1980’s

Earlier this year Jane Birkin and the rest of the world learned of the horrid conditions that the crocodiles are kept in until their horrible and sad demise at 3 years of age. Like most of us, Jane was outraged and asked Hermes to remove her name from one of their most iconic handbags, the “Birkin,” unless they fix the situation and improve the conditions for the crocodiles. 3 crocodiles are used to make one Birkin. Hermes, unwilling to lose Jane and her name from their handbag, addressed the issues right away. The French company will take steps to improve the conditions and even drop the crocodile farms that don’t meet their standards for raising and farming crocodiles.

Crocodile Birkin in Rouge H

As legend has it, Jane was sitting on an airplane near Jean-Louis Dumas in 1981 and she reached to get something out her bag from the overhead compartment, but it all fell to the floor. In 1982 he designed her the perfect weekender bag, but only sent it to her in 1984. Jane loved the bag and so did the rest of the world. Since she was the muse, the bag was named the “Birkin” after her.

Hemes Birkin

Prices for the Birkin range from 5,850€ or the US price of $9,400 (for a small 25cm epsom leather bag) to upwards a million euro or even more dollars. The price for this exclusive bags depends the leather (ranges from stamped epsom to exotics as crocodile, ostrich, ect.), to hardware choices (with diamonds, plain, stamped, ect.), to any other personalization that will be requested. Even if someone would like to buy a Birkin, it usually takes years to build a relationship with a store to even be offered one of the bags, and then the customer can usually only buy 1 bag in every 6 months.

So start building a relationship in with a store soon, because prices only go up and so does the popularity of this iconic bag.

The pictures in this post are not mine, unlike all my other posts. I found them on google and are properties of respective owners.