Fashion

HOW A BIRKIN ALMOST DESTROYED SOMEONE’S CAREER

The queen of all bags is obviously the Birkin. Or the Kelly. Both from Hermès. Both bags have magical guises for two reasons. One: they are unbelievably expensive. You have to cough up about 8000 euros if you want to walk around with one. Unless you want one with crocodile or snake skin. That’ll cost you more along the lines of 20.000 euros. Someone even once paid 90.000 (wanna see?) to get their hands on one.

And the second decisive factor comes in the form of a waiting list. If you want one of these Hermès beauties, you need to be patient because you’ll have to wait roughly a year before it’s ready. Word on the block is that Hermès give those they’d rather not see walking around with their bags, a much longer waiting time (think rich Russians without any style or the I’ll-just-swipe-my-wealthy-husbands-card-types). Think of it as some kind of discouragement tactic. But rich women who are capable of buying whatever they please, love waiting lists. They’re not used to having to beg and yearn for something which makes the bag, just like unrequited love, even more appealing. Especially if it means they can open up their friends register who knows someone, who then also knows someone at Hermès, to help them get their hands on a bag earlier than the rest.

Since I am not yet in this blessed situation to be able to say: “I’ll take a Hermès” (the one on the photo was one I borrowed from a more fortunate friend), I found the perfect excuse. You’re always able to say you think it’s too heavy. Because it is. The inside of the bag happens to be composed of embroided leather which makes it heavy. Seriously, if you ever wonder how all those rich women have such toned upper arms, you now know the answer. It’s a Birkin.

“If you ever wonder how all those rich women have such toned upper arms, you now know the answer.”

But the very last sentence in my favorite book of the week ‘Primates of Park Avenue’ gave us another excuse to go through life without a Hermès. The author of the book caved and also decided to get her hands on a Birkin. Including the waiting list, the connections and the whole shebang. But at the end of the book (spoiler), when she moves back to the Upper West Side, she let’s us know she had to give up on her Birkin. No, it had nothing to do with the fact that the bag didn’t fit the dress code on the other side of Central Park.

For weeks the author has been struggling with a numbness in her underarm. She can’t type, which is hard for a writer, and already dropped by one of the best doctors in the city. When she and her husband go to Paris for a business trip, she can no longer handle it and drops by a Parisian doctor in the sixth arrondissement. The female doctor listens to her as she describes her struggles writing because of the pain, looks her up and down from her perfectly blond head of hair to her Charlotte Olympia flats and says in her straight-to-the-point-French-accent: “Ietz ze Birkin or ze wraiting. You choozuh.”

P.s.: Not that I’ve now been cured of my one-day-I’ll-own-a-Birkin-wish, but I seriously am contemplating sending Wednesday Martin an email with a great offer. And French doctors willing to help me out?