LOOK: "Priceless" original rare designer bag set for auction
Iconic auction house Sotheby's has released a statement saying this sale "holds the potential to redefine records."
Every day, new fashion items become desirable and are deemed collector items.
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Very few reach the esteemed heights of the Hermès Birkin bag.
This design has become the fashion house's biggest success.
And the creation was born on a 1984 flight from Paris to London.
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British actress Jane Birkin was seated next to Jean-Louis Dumas, Executive Chairman of Hermès (1978-2006), complaining to him that she couldn't find a bag that fit her needs as a young mother.
According to the Hermés website, "A born creator with a keen eye, he immediately sketched a supple and spacious rectangular holdall with a burnished flap and saddle stitching. With a dedicated space for her baby’s bottles!"
I think I drew it on the sick bag—or the not-be-sick bag. And [Dumas] said ‘I’ll make it for you’.
The rest, as they say, is history.
In the coming decades, these bags will become infamous, a serious collector's item, and separate the rich from the exceptionally rich.
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Rapper Cardi B flaunted her collection of 23 Birkin bags in 2020 and has acquired more in the last five years.
The bag is available in a range of styles, colours, and materials, with prices ranging from R530,000 ($30,000) to R5-million ($300,000).
While you can often find Birkin bags on the auction block, an upcoming sale of a very special bag has captured the attention of the fashion world and collectors worldwide.
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Sotheby's has announced that it will include the prototype Birkin in its 'Fashion Icons' auction.
The bag has lived quite a life.
The bag, the original owned by the late Jane Birkin, was donated to the French AIDS Charity Association Solidarité Sida in 1994 before a Paris-based collector, Catherine Benier, purchased it.
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Benier previously lent the bag to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, but it has now returned to New York, which is viewable at the auction house's galleries before it goes on sale on 10 July.
Those within the auction and fashion industries have speculated that the bag is set to sell for a possible record-breaking amount.
There is no doubt that the Original Birkin bag is 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.
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Main image courtesy of Sotheby's