The Birkin bag is younger than you think. Just 37 glorious years old in fact. Conceived in 1984, when the Hermes chief executive, Jean-Louis Dumas, was on a flight from Paris to London and found himself sat next to the ever-iconic Jane Birkin. The story goes that Birkin had placed her raffia travelling bag in the overhead compartment, but the contents tumbled out, leaving her (and we hope a chivalrous Dumas himself) scrambling around the floor to retrieve them. Birkin explained that she couldn’t find a weekend bag that she liked, and the beginnings of the (other and equally iconic) Birkin was born.
The shape is actually based the Haut a Courroies bag, created in 1900, but the supple leather tote of 84 years later dwarfed it’s ancestorial inspiration almost immediately. By the end of the 1980s, the Birkin was the definition of wealth and class. A leather status symbol with a waiting list as legendary as the bag itself. And its exclusivity has only continued to grow. The Birkin has been namechecked in lyrics by Jay-Z and ASAP Rocky, while Drake has admitted that he has amassed a huge collection for his future wife. Lucky her.