Fashion
HOW THE BIRKIN BAG ALMOST DESTROYED SOMEONE'S CAREER
The queen of bags is of course the Birkin. Or the Kelly. Both from the house of Hermès. The bags have magical shapes for many reasons. One: they are ridiculously expensive. For a decent bag, you should think about 8000 euros. Unless you want it in crocodile or snake variant, then the price can easily go up to around 20,000 euros. There was even one sold for 90,000 euros (looking?), but that one was also beautifully painted.
A second very determining factor in this holy grail of greed is the waiting list. It is very normal that you have to twiddle your thumbs for a year before your beloved bag is ready. Now I have heard whispers that Hermès gives extra long waiting times to the types they prefer not to see flaunting their goods (think rich Russians without taste or I’ll-pull-the-card-of-my-powerful-man-types) as a kind of discouragement policy. But rich women who can buy anything love waiting lists. They are not used to begging and yearning for something, so that makes the bag, just like an unattainable love, extra attractive. Especially if they can also pull a register of influential girlfriends who can help them get numbers of people who know people at Hermès, allowing them to acquire that bag sooner than the rest of the rabble.
Because I am not yet in the blessed situation where I can say on a sunny Saturday: “Give me a little Hermès” (the one in the photo I borrowed from a wealthy friend), I have the perfect excuse. You can always say that you find it too heavy. Because it is. It is also lined with a layer of leather on the inside, making it extra heavy. Really, if you wonder why all those rich women have such muscular upper arms, you now know the answer. It’s the Birkin.
“Really, if you wonder why all those rich women have such muscular upper arms, you now know the answer.”
But the final chord of my favorite book of the week ‘Primates of Park Avenue’ gave us yet another excuse why you go through life without Hermès. The author succumbed to the rituals of the mothers of Park Avenue and also bought herself a Birkin. Including the waiting list, the connections, and the whole shebang. But at the end of the book (spoiler), when she has already moved to the Upper West Side, she also tells that she had to give up the Birkin. No, it had nothing to do with the bag not fitting the dress code on the other side of Central Park.
The author has been struggling for weeks with a numb feeling in her forearm. She can no longer type, which is quite difficult for a writer, and has already visited the best doctors in New York. When she is accompanying her husband on a business trip to Paris (rhymes), she can’t take it any longer and knocks on the door of a chic Parisian doctor in the sixth arrondissement. The female doctor listens to her as Wednesday (the author) tells her that she can’t type anymore due to the pain, examines her from perfectly bleached crown to Charlotte Olympia ballerina, and says in her exactly-how-you-want-it-French accent: “Ietz ze Birkin or ze wraiting. You choozuh.”
P.S.: Not that I was really cured of my once-want-to-have-a-Hermès-wish. I seriously considered sending Wednesday Martin an email and making her a good offer. Is there perhaps a French doctor in the room?
