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April 17, 2008 10:22 am
The Hermes Birkin. You, reader of this blog, need no more introduction to the world’s most sought-after handbag. You know about the handmade tools that Hermès craftsmen use to fashion these rarefied totes, about the storied company history, and the bag’s famous carriers—including, naturellement, Jane Birkin herself, whose winsome personal style inspired the creation of her namesake carryall. And you inevitably know about the waiting list to get one. Or do you? As Michael Tonello, the author of “Bringing Home the Birkin” (William Morrow), a tell-all account of his days as an eBay Birkin reseller, reveals, the daunting list is more PR stunt than reality. Tonello logged hundreds of thousand of air miles, collected 111 stamps in his passport, and spent upwards of $1.6 million dollars on Birkins. Bought them by the dozen, in fact, and sold them to Birkin collectors all over the world, without ever running into a salesperson who told him to put this name on a list. All it took was a willingness to think outside the big orange box.
As you recount in the book, you had some odd things happen to you when you were a professional Birkin reseller…
Like the time one of my buyers held a bag hostage—which I’d paid for with several thousand dollars of my money. That was pretty intense. There were also just huge logistics problems with doing it. I’d hit one city after another, so after three or four days, I’d have so many shopping bags—and the shopping bag you get for a Birkin is pretty big—that I looked like Liz Taylor going away on vacation. That’s when I started booking myself into four-star hotels, where they had good security and a concierge who knew how to wrap up a Birkin for FedEx. Plus I was going to all these cities and I never saw anything but the Hermès store—I never went to a museum. So I thought I owed it to myself.
So there’s a Diderot effect that goes along with having a Birkin—you need to upgrade the rest of your life to fit the bag.
Exactly. This bag has an incredible impact on people. I get on an elevator in New York and if a woman gets on and she’s carrying a Birkin, every other woman on the elevator looks at her differently. They want to know more about her.
What is it about the Birkin that inspires that kind of fascination?
I think the majority of people have heard about the Birkin—thanks to “Sex and the City” and Posh Spice and Lil’ Kim rapping about one and Martha Stewart. But the general public hasn’t seen one. There’s this mystique. A Chanel or a Balenciaga bag is exclusive, but it’s still only $1,500. The price of a basic, 35-centimeter Birkin in regular grainy leather—what I call a starter Birkin—is now about $9,000. A crocodile Birkin is $34,000. That’s a huge amount of money for the average person to spend on a handbag.
But you had customers who spent many times that.
I had one who bought in excess of 60 Birkins.
Which is far more handbags than any one woman could use.
My attitude was, they could use them as planters after they bought them.
Let’s talk about what you call the Formula, which pretty much puts the lie to the mythical Birkin waiting list.
You started seeing references to the waiting list in the mid-nineties. Some magazines would talk about a two-year waiting list, others would talk about a three-year one. At one point you started getting “the waiting list has closed.” But in fact, I would go into nine out of ten stores and get a Birkin. In a nutshell, you need to go in and spend enough money on non-Birkins—for me the magic number was about $1,000, though it depends the store—and then ask for the bag. I loved going shopping in the last few days of the month, when stores were trying to make their sales targets. I had one store that agreed to sell me two crocodile Birkins as long as I put them on two different cards or paid for one in cash so the fact that one person bought two wouldn’t be picked up on by Hermès.
But in the end Hermès did pick up on you. What are you doing with your post-Birkin life?
Well, I’ve got an option on a film for this book, and I just wrote a children’s book about my two cats, Gala and Dalí. So I guess I’m trying to be a writer.
Not really a career path that will let you buy a Birkin.
Probably not. But it’s less exhausting. And I think the rewards are better.
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