The Original Birkin Bag Was Made After Actress Jane Birkin Spilled Her Belongings on the CEO of Hermès in 1983
The iconic accessory would become one of the most expensive handbags in fashion history. Now, the prototype is heading to the auction block, where it’s likely to fetch an exorbitant sum
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For many years, Jane Birkin carried her things in a wicker basket. Her baguettes, her diary, her keys and her daughter Charlotte’s baby bottles overflowed from the rigid, hefty and only somewhat practical container.
On a 1983 Air France flight with Charlotte, Birkin’s basket spilled onto her seatmate, who, as it happened, was Jean-Louis Dumas, the CEO of the luxury brand Hermès.
The British-French actress and singer began to talk to Dumas. She complained that his fashion house made no bag between the small Kelly bag and a suitcase. “He said, ‘Well, draw it for me,’ and so I drew it on one of those sick bags—the vomit bags—in the airplane,” Birkin told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in a 2020 interview.
In 1985, Hermès presented Birkin with a prototype of her ideal bag as a gift with one request: that the bag would bear her name. She agreed, and the Birkin bag—one of the world’s most iconic handbags—was born.
Forty years after it was designed, the prototype bag is coming to auction as part of Sotheby’s “Fashion Icons” sale in Paris on July 10, 2025.
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So far, the auction house has refused to release a pre-sale estimate for what its global head of handbags and fashion Morgane Halimi describes in the lot listing as “a true one-of-a-kind—a singular piece of fashion history that has grown into a pop culture phenomenon that signals luxury in the most refined way possible.”
A new Birkin bag starts at around $9,000 in Hermès stores, but prices are highly variable. Certain combinations of materials, size and color can inflate the price to tens of thousands of dollars. At auction, high-quality, second-hand Birkin bags with a unique provenance fetch much more. Another of Birkin’s Birkin bags sold for around $160,000 in a 2021 auction, five times its pre-sale estimate.
“At this stage, we will communicate [an estimate] privately to potential bidders,” Halimi tells the New York Times’ Marisa Meltzer. “Obviously, it is a one-of-a-kind piece, completely apart from any other handbag, or any other Birkin.”
According to Sotheby’s, Birkin’s prototype bag has seven unique features that were never replicated together on later models.
The most distinctive difference is the fixed, non-removable shoulder strap. This feature reflects the practicality that Birkin and Hermès designers had in mind for the first bag. Birkin was often seen with her bag bursting at the seams. A shoulder strap helped her tote the load.
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While later versions of the bag have retained some elements of functionality, the shoulder strap disappeared, save for a limited-edition run with a detachable strap in the 1990s.
Other changes between the prototype and finished product are more subtle. The original gilded brass hardware was replaced with gold-plated features. The studs on the bottom of the bag are now larger. The brand of zippers Hermès uses has changed, as well.
Birkin seemed unconcerned with such tweaks. She used the prototype bag stamped with her initials, “J.B.,” for nearly ten years. She attached nail clippers, which are included in the sale, to the base of the shoulder strap, and she plastered the bag with stickers for humanitarian causes she supported.
In 1994, Birkin sold the prototype at an auction for Association Solidarité Sida, a French AIDS charity. The bag sold again at auction in 2000, where it was purchased by collector Catherine Benier for an undisclosed price.
“There is the craftsmanship: You can repair it and restore it and cherish it. And then in a world of fast fashion and seasonal trends, it’s not going to be out of style anytime soon,” Halimi tells the Times. “If you are offered one to buy at Hermès, you feel like part of this small club.”
Birkin bags have taken on a life of their own since the prototype launched. They come in many sizes, colors and patterns. Some even come with diamonds and dyed crocodile skin, like the Diamond Himalaya Birkin, which sold for more than $450,000 at auction in 2022.
In 2015, Birkin demanded her name be removed from the crocodile-skin version of the bag after a video revealed the fashion house’s cruel practices at factory farms.
But the brand reassured Birkin, who died in 2023, that it was an isolated incident. Her name remains attached to the exclusive handbag. As Birkin told CNN in 2020, “When I’m dead … they’ll possibly only even talk about the bag.”
