Did you know the original Hermes Birkin was inspired by what young mothers need?

Jane Birkin’s very own original Hermes Birkin bag recently went under the hammer. Sotheby’s auctioned off the iconic 1984 handbag during its Paris Fashion Icons sale and the bag was sold for 8.6 million euros, about $10.1 million. The bag is designed in timeless black leather with gold hardware and signature saddle stitching.

How young mothers influenced the design of the OG Birkin bag

And very few people know that the Birkin was born from a chance meeting between Birkin and then-Hermès CEO Jean-Louis Dumas on a flight nearly four decades ago.

It was commissioned for the British-French actress, singer, and designer and very bag became one of fashion’s most coveted status symbols. But its inception was rooted in practicality!

After a chance encounter with Hermès executive Jean-Louis Dumas on a flight, Jane Birkin famously sketched her idea on an airplane sick bag. The contents of Birkin's own wicker bag were spilling over; looking for a practical yet stylish carry-all for young mothers, she modeled her design on one of the fashion house’s existing and well-loved bag styles.

“I said, ‘Why don’t you make a bag that’s four times the Kelly that you can leave open?’ Because girls like to have things on the end of their arm to put all their stuff in,” Birkin said.

Dumas refined Birkin’s sketch by drawing inspiration from Hermès’ Haut à Courroies bag. He later presented the actress with a black calfskin prototype and proposed naming the new handbag after her.

However, Birkin was not the first celebrity to inspire the French luxury house; Hermès had already rechristened its Sac à dépêches as the Kelly bag in 1977, in honour of Grace Kelly.

“You know, when I’m dead, not only will people remember me for ‘Je t’aime moi non plus,’ but they’ll possibly only talk about the bag,” Birkin had said once.

Hermès reportedly paid Jane Birkin around $40,000 a year in royalties for the use of her name, but as per reports, she regularly gave away this money to charitable causes. Despite lending her name to the iconic bag, the actress owned only a handful of Birkins during her lifetime.

In 2014, she auctioned one of them and donated the proceeds to Anno’s Africa, a charity named in memory of her late nephew. That same bag later returned to the auction block in 2021, where it sold for $162,000 at a Bonhams auction.

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