On a 1984 flight from Paris to London, Jane Birkin’s wicker basket tipped over and scattered scripts, makeup, and baby supplies across the cabin floor. The man beside her, Jean-Louis Dumas, happened to run Hermès. When she complained that the house made nothing roomy enough for a mother, he sketched a soft, two-handled tote on the spot and asked to name it after her. This episode follows that sketch from a saddlery founded in 1837 to the most coveted handbag on earth.

The price is only partly about leather. Each Birkin is saddle stitched by a single artisan over 15 to 20 hours, a method no machine can copy, and Hermès uses that slow craft to protect a deliberate scarcity. The result is a textbook Veblen good: the harder it is to buy, the more people want it. That scarcity built a resale market that beat the S&P 500, drew an antitrust lawsuit, inspired a counterfeiting ring of former employees, and finally provoked an $80 Walmart parody.

• Jane Birkin snapped that Hermès made no bags with pockets, and Dumas answered, ‘But I am Hermès,’ before drawing the design, by some accounts on an airplane sickness bag.
• A 2016 study found Birkins returned an average of 14.2 percent a year from 1984 to 2015, and her original 1984 prototype sold in 2025 for 8.6 million euros.
• A 2024 antitrust suit in California alleges shoppers must first buy shoes, scarves, belts, or jewelry before a sales associate will offer them a Birkin.
• Birkin owned only one bag at a time, called it bloody heavy, needed surgery for tendonitis, and in 2015 demanded her name be removed from the crocodile version over farm conditions.
• Ten people were sentenced in France in 2020 for a fake Birkin operation worth over two million euros, and seven of them were former Hermès workers using stolen leather, zippers, and tools.