Key Highlights
- As she reached for the overhead locker the basket overturned, spilling the contents on her neighbour.
- He turned out to be the chief executive of Hermès, the French luxury goods company, and immediately offered to make her a bag with internal pockets and a secure closure.
- Birkin sketched what she wanted on a sick bag and “The Birkin” was born: a slouchy trapezoid in finest leather complete with its own little padlock.
- These days a Birkin bag starts at around £10,000 while the original, made for Birkin herself, was auctioned this summer for £7.4m. It is a tale that gets endlessly repeated thanks to its neat compression of the main beats of the Jane Birkin story.
- First, there’s the insouciance, the fact that the Anglo-French singer and actor never seemed to go after anything; rather, it came to her.
