Hermes in print
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Fashion row has an article on big bags which features the HAC http://www.thefashionrow.com/bags-purses/they-cost-thousands/
Saw an interesting article on the Wall Street Journal about Hermes and Birkins. Thought I'd share.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB120909311799444161.html?mod=2_1356_topbox
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB120909311799444161.html?mod=2_1356_topbox
An old article from 2001, but it nicely sums the birkin's allure for me...
The Observer
Who spends £11,000 on a handbag?
Kate Moss has one in denim, Bryan Adams buys them for his loved ones,
and Martine McCutcheon and Naomi Campbell wouldn't be seen without
their Hermès Birkin. William Shaw delves into handbag heaven
Eleven grand for a handbag? Oscar Wilde's Lady Bracknell would be apoplectic.
Actually, eleven grand's not bad. In America the feeding frenzy for
this particular accessory has reached such heights that Tina Brown's
Talk magazine, in a recent gushing tribute to it, claimed that similar
crocodile-skin models were on offer in the US for as much as $80,000.
But even if you've got the money to spend, there is a waiting list.
The bag's manufacturer, Hermès, wrings its hands and apologises that
demand for its leather goods is so high that there is a waiting list
of up to nine months for finished items.
Again, nine months isn't so long, either. Because the real hurdle is
getting your name on the list in the first place. Demand currently so
far outstrips supply the list is often closed. You can wait years.
Crisis? What crisis? Doesn't anyone know there's a recession looming?
Those who care passionately about such high-end accessories may
recognise the handbag straight away as a Hermès Birkin. That's Birkin
as in Jane Birkin, known principally to the rest of us as the
breathy-voiced tease who supplied the vocals to Serge Gainsborough's
60s hit 'Je T'Aime... Moi Non Plus' and the woman who had her clothes
torn off in Antonioni's Blow Up .
The Birkin bag was created in 1984 after Hermès president Jean-Louis
Dumas met the actress on a plane. Jane Birkin was struggling with the
overhead locker, complaining that no one made a handbag that suited
her needs. Dumas invited her to the Faubourg workshops where the
Birkin bag was first sketched out. For such a cult item, it's
surprisingly practical: easy to get into and deceptively large. As one
owner proudly announced, 'Career, cosmetic and gynaecological needs
are all served by a single bag.'
For years, Hermès's bestselling bag has been the Kelly - so called
after Grace Kelly clutched one to her belly in 1956 to disguise the
telltale bulge of her pregnancy from a Life magazine paparazzo.
However, recently, the waiting lists have started to swell with orders
for the larger Birkin. Tech stocks may tumble and recession may loom,
but the appetite for le Birkin in the haut monde seems insatiable.
Kate Moss has one in denim. Naomi Campbell, Meg Mathews and Martine
McCutcheon all have them. Bryan Adams buys them as presents for loved
ones.
Owners tell you sotto voce how they managed to jump the queue to get
theirs - about how they knew someone in the company who pulled
strings. An entire geography of power can be mapped in the time it
takes to get a Birkin.
Kate Betts, former editor-in-chief at Harper's Bazaar, knows all about
that. As an editor, she jumped the queue easily for her first Birkin.
However, she ordered a second shortly before losing that job in one of
New York's high-profile cyclical media culls. Now at home bringing up
her two-year-old, she doesn't know how long she's going to have to
wait for her second. 'I'm not a fashion editor any more, so I expect
I'll have to wait a little longer,' she says wryly. 'They're very
elusive about it. "Oh, anywhere between three months and 12 years."'
Those in the know talk of their bags with the conspiratorial lust you
normally meet in heroin addicts. One Vogue journalist who bought a
Birkin in Hermès Rouge leather recently lives in fear that her husband
will one day discover how much it really cost.
'I'm ashamed of myself,' the owner confesses penitently. 'I think it's
an ill-making amount of money to spend on a handbag.'
She still finds herself gazing at her coveted bag, feeling faintly
sick. She had wanted one for years and she knew that it's not the sort
of bag her husband would ever buy her. 'For a straight man to think of
going to a store to spend that much money on a bag is total anathema,'
she says.
So the Vogue journalist ordered it herself, and when the horrifying
day came to buy the most expensive thing she'd ever bought for
herself, she snuck into the shop armed with cash, chequebooks and
credit cards, scraping the money together from anywhere she could.
'Oh, it happens all the time,' the saleswoman soothed her
embarrassment as she counted out the piles of money. 'You wouldn't
believe how often. You wouldn't believe how much of the housekeeping
money goes missing.' 'Oh good,' said the guilty shopper. 'I'm not
alone.'
A recently shot episode of the Sex and the City - to be screened in
the UK in February - sums up the atmosphere of frenzy surrounding the
brand. The thrusting, sex-hungry Samantha acts as PR for the real-life
actress Lucy Liu. Samantha craves a Birkin bag, but wants to jump the
yawning waiting list, so she employs Liu's star power to jump the
queue, ordering one in Liu's name. Unfortunately, the bag is delivered
direct to Liu. When an indignant Samantha tells Liu that the bag was
meant for her, Liu is understandably furious and sacks Samantha on the
spot. A plotline featuring lust, corruption and downfall, without even
a whiff of copulation: such are the passions inspired by the Birkin.
It's not just America that's besotted, either. Japan accounts for a
quarter of Hermès's sales. Last June, Dumas opened a new Hermès outlet
in Tokyo's glitzy Ginza district. It was designed by Renzo Piano and
cost $250m to build. However grim the Japanese economy has been in
recent times, it's not so grim that they can do without their
handbags.
Hermès began less glamorously in 1837 in the Madeleine quarter of
Paris. Like the House of Gucci - which still reminds you of the fact
that it began by making saddles using that famous horse-bit motif on
its loafers - it soon discovered that there was nothing the
20th-century jet set admired more than a bit of horsiness.
In 1922, the wife of Emile-Maurice Hermès made a similar complaint to
the one Jane Birkin would utter 60 years later: she couldn't find a
decent bag anywhere. Emile-Maurice created the Bolide - the 'racing
car' - a sleek, modernist design incorporating the newfangled zip
fastener, a device which Emile-Maurice had admired so much on a visit
to New York that he had bought the patent rights to it. So the Hermès
handbag was born.
Unlike Gucci and so many other fashion houses, Hermès has remained a
family-owned company. Only 20 per cent of shares are traded on the
Paris Bourse. Jean-Louis supervises every each new product. 'He
decides very quickly - "Ce sortira, Ce sortira pas,"' Bertrand de
Courcy of Hermès explains. He's worked for the company for 37 years.
Also, unlike Gucci, Hermès still makes saddles.
On the top floor of its old headquarters at 24 rue du Faubourg
Saint-Honoré, is the Atelier de Sellerie, a small roomful of craftsmen
still sit hammering, stitching and polishing beautiful saddles for the
bums of the world's posh in exactly the same way as they have done
here for more than a hundred years. The cheapest model will set you
back about £1,900. On a bookshelf sit the leather-bound record books
in which the details of every saddle Hermès has ever made here is
recorded.
This room can barely manage 400 saddles a year, a tiny fraction of the
turnover of a company that sold more than $1bn worth of goods last
year. But the ethic of almost over-meticulous craftsmanship learned in
saddle-making spreads throughout the company. 'Don't forget,' says
Kate Betts, 'Hermès is a Protestant family.'
(to be continued)
The Observer
Who spends £11,000 on a handbag?
Kate Moss has one in denim, Bryan Adams buys them for his loved ones,
and Martine McCutcheon and Naomi Campbell wouldn't be seen without
their Hermès Birkin. William Shaw delves into handbag heaven
Eleven grand for a handbag? Oscar Wilde's Lady Bracknell would be apoplectic.
Actually, eleven grand's not bad. In America the feeding frenzy for
this particular accessory has reached such heights that Tina Brown's
Talk magazine, in a recent gushing tribute to it, claimed that similar
crocodile-skin models were on offer in the US for as much as $80,000.
But even if you've got the money to spend, there is a waiting list.
The bag's manufacturer, Hermès, wrings its hands and apologises that
demand for its leather goods is so high that there is a waiting list
of up to nine months for finished items.
Again, nine months isn't so long, either. Because the real hurdle is
getting your name on the list in the first place. Demand currently so
far outstrips supply the list is often closed. You can wait years.
Crisis? What crisis? Doesn't anyone know there's a recession looming?
Those who care passionately about such high-end accessories may
recognise the handbag straight away as a Hermès Birkin. That's Birkin
as in Jane Birkin, known principally to the rest of us as the
breathy-voiced tease who supplied the vocals to Serge Gainsborough's
60s hit 'Je T'Aime... Moi Non Plus' and the woman who had her clothes
torn off in Antonioni's Blow Up .
The Birkin bag was created in 1984 after Hermès president Jean-Louis
Dumas met the actress on a plane. Jane Birkin was struggling with the
overhead locker, complaining that no one made a handbag that suited
her needs. Dumas invited her to the Faubourg workshops where the
Birkin bag was first sketched out. For such a cult item, it's
surprisingly practical: easy to get into and deceptively large. As one
owner proudly announced, 'Career, cosmetic and gynaecological needs
are all served by a single bag.'
For years, Hermès's bestselling bag has been the Kelly - so called
after Grace Kelly clutched one to her belly in 1956 to disguise the
telltale bulge of her pregnancy from a Life magazine paparazzo.
However, recently, the waiting lists have started to swell with orders
for the larger Birkin. Tech stocks may tumble and recession may loom,
but the appetite for le Birkin in the haut monde seems insatiable.
Kate Moss has one in denim. Naomi Campbell, Meg Mathews and Martine
McCutcheon all have them. Bryan Adams buys them as presents for loved
ones.
Owners tell you sotto voce how they managed to jump the queue to get
theirs - about how they knew someone in the company who pulled
strings. An entire geography of power can be mapped in the time it
takes to get a Birkin.
Kate Betts, former editor-in-chief at Harper's Bazaar, knows all about
that. As an editor, she jumped the queue easily for her first Birkin.
However, she ordered a second shortly before losing that job in one of
New York's high-profile cyclical media culls. Now at home bringing up
her two-year-old, she doesn't know how long she's going to have to
wait for her second. 'I'm not a fashion editor any more, so I expect
I'll have to wait a little longer,' she says wryly. 'They're very
elusive about it. "Oh, anywhere between three months and 12 years."'
Those in the know talk of their bags with the conspiratorial lust you
normally meet in heroin addicts. One Vogue journalist who bought a
Birkin in Hermès Rouge leather recently lives in fear that her husband
will one day discover how much it really cost.
'I'm ashamed of myself,' the owner confesses penitently. 'I think it's
an ill-making amount of money to spend on a handbag.'
She still finds herself gazing at her coveted bag, feeling faintly
sick. She had wanted one for years and she knew that it's not the sort
of bag her husband would ever buy her. 'For a straight man to think of
going to a store to spend that much money on a bag is total anathema,'
she says.
So the Vogue journalist ordered it herself, and when the horrifying
day came to buy the most expensive thing she'd ever bought for
herself, she snuck into the shop armed with cash, chequebooks and
credit cards, scraping the money together from anywhere she could.
'Oh, it happens all the time,' the saleswoman soothed her
embarrassment as she counted out the piles of money. 'You wouldn't
believe how often. You wouldn't believe how much of the housekeeping
money goes missing.' 'Oh good,' said the guilty shopper. 'I'm not
alone.'
A recently shot episode of the Sex and the City - to be screened in
the UK in February - sums up the atmosphere of frenzy surrounding the
brand. The thrusting, sex-hungry Samantha acts as PR for the real-life
actress Lucy Liu. Samantha craves a Birkin bag, but wants to jump the
yawning waiting list, so she employs Liu's star power to jump the
queue, ordering one in Liu's name. Unfortunately, the bag is delivered
direct to Liu. When an indignant Samantha tells Liu that the bag was
meant for her, Liu is understandably furious and sacks Samantha on the
spot. A plotline featuring lust, corruption and downfall, without even
a whiff of copulation: such are the passions inspired by the Birkin.
It's not just America that's besotted, either. Japan accounts for a
quarter of Hermès's sales. Last June, Dumas opened a new Hermès outlet
in Tokyo's glitzy Ginza district. It was designed by Renzo Piano and
cost $250m to build. However grim the Japanese economy has been in
recent times, it's not so grim that they can do without their
handbags.
Hermès began less glamorously in 1837 in the Madeleine quarter of
Paris. Like the House of Gucci - which still reminds you of the fact
that it began by making saddles using that famous horse-bit motif on
its loafers - it soon discovered that there was nothing the
20th-century jet set admired more than a bit of horsiness.
In 1922, the wife of Emile-Maurice Hermès made a similar complaint to
the one Jane Birkin would utter 60 years later: she couldn't find a
decent bag anywhere. Emile-Maurice created the Bolide - the 'racing
car' - a sleek, modernist design incorporating the newfangled zip
fastener, a device which Emile-Maurice had admired so much on a visit
to New York that he had bought the patent rights to it. So the Hermès
handbag was born.
Unlike Gucci and so many other fashion houses, Hermès has remained a
family-owned company. Only 20 per cent of shares are traded on the
Paris Bourse. Jean-Louis supervises every each new product. 'He
decides very quickly - "Ce sortira, Ce sortira pas,"' Bertrand de
Courcy of Hermès explains. He's worked for the company for 37 years.
Also, unlike Gucci, Hermès still makes saddles.
On the top floor of its old headquarters at 24 rue du Faubourg
Saint-Honoré, is the Atelier de Sellerie, a small roomful of craftsmen
still sit hammering, stitching and polishing beautiful saddles for the
bums of the world's posh in exactly the same way as they have done
here for more than a hundred years. The cheapest model will set you
back about £1,900. On a bookshelf sit the leather-bound record books
in which the details of every saddle Hermès has ever made here is
recorded.
This room can barely manage 400 saddles a year, a tiny fraction of the
turnover of a company that sold more than $1bn worth of goods last
year. But the ethic of almost over-meticulous craftsmanship learned in
saddle-making spreads throughout the company. 'Don't forget,' says
Kate Betts, 'Hermès is a Protestant family.'
(to be continued)
The main leatherworks was moved to a gigantic atelier in the Paris
suburb of Pantin in 1992. Inside its sleek white walls, the true
idiosyncrasy of the Hermès venture becomes apparent. Emile-Maurice
Hermès - creator of the first Hermès handbag - may have liked modern
designs and creations such as the zip fastener, but he loathed Henry
Ford's Johnny-come-lately ideas for mass production. Part of the
Hermès cachet is that each product is still individually handmade.
In the huge workrooms here, 250 skilled workers - men and women - sit
carefully at desks surrounded by the normal clutter of modernity -
minidisc players and photographs of their kids. But their tools are
the same as have been used for hundreds of years. Between their knees,
they clutch the giant wooden pince-à-coudre which grip the bags as
they work on them with awls and needles, patiently stitching and then
polishing the seams with large lumps of beeswax. For all the frippery
that surrounds them, the bags are famously robust. They are hand-made
using saddle-stitch - two needles passing across the seam in opposite
directions.
Each worker guards his or her own tools carefully. Retiring craftsmen
sometimes chose a favoured pupil to pass their set on to. It takes
about five years to become skilled enough to be let loose on your own
Birkin bag. Employees typically have been trained for three years
before arriving here, and will usually work with a more experienced
craftsman for another two.
A single bag will take about 18 hours to complete, from cutting to
finishing. Each carftsman works on a single handbag themselves.
Printed discretely on each bag in gold ink is a code which identifies
the worker who made it, the year it was made and the particular
atelier it was made in, allowing the Arthur Negus's of the future to
determine any bag's provenance. That's part of the cachet. This
particular workshop, here in Pantin, is denoted by the letter X.
Workers bend over their workbenches in quiet concentration,
interrupted by the occasional banging of an awl. In the 21st century,
these ranks of artisans, busily practising skills that nearly every
other modern industry has abandoned, make an incredible sight. This is
part of the mystique you buy into with a Birkin. Whatever Birkin
devotees say, you could buy something just as practical in nylon, but
with an Hermès bag you're buying a distinctly un-21st-century ideal of
permanence.
'It could be done with a machine,' says Bertrand, 'but if it was, it
would not be Hermès any more.'
In a corner, a leather-worker sits patiently polishing blemishes from
a 35-year-old bag. Customers can send them back here to be renovated.
Mothers pass theirs on to their daughters.
In the leather store a few streets away, some of the finest hide in
the world waits to be cut. Fork-lift electric trucks loaded with piles
of skin labelled 'Veau evercalf' and 'Box noisette' drift past
silently. 'Oh happy cows,' murmurs one visitor, 'to give your life for
a Birkin.' Here, laid out on acres of huge, wide shelves are alligator
skins from Florida, buffalo hides from Pakistan, crocodile skins from
Australia, goats from India, sharks from Thailand and lizards from
Malaysia. Here oxen, goats, deer and calves have all surrendered their
skins. All the hides are painstakingly tanned and dyed every colour,
pattern and texture imaginable. Hermès has cornered world supplies for
some of the finest leathers on earth. If Adam gave names to all
cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field,
Hermès found a way of turning them into stylish accessories. 'You
wouldn't want to bring Stella McCartney in here,' mutters a
delightfully indiscreet PR.
Around 80 coupeurs work cutting the skins. Only the best parts are
chosen. Neck areas and flanks where the grain is not perfect are
chucked in the bin. It takes two ostriches to make a single
ostrich-skin Birkin. Only the best back-skin is used for the crocodile
bag. The slightest blemish is tutted over and rejected.
The care lavished on each bag is remarkable. Adjusting supply to meet
demand is not an easy option. Hermès is lobbying the French government
vigorously to try to persuade it to loosen the employment laws that
prevent their workers from working more than a 35-hour week. They have
a powerful weapon: last week Bertrand hosted a tour for a large group
of politicians' wives who came to coo and gape at the fabulous Hermès
bags.
Back at the store, elegant Japanese women in Manolo Blahnik shoes pore
over 'the book' - a sample book of all the leathers. One of the
biggest selling points of Hermès bags is that you can chose the
combination of leathers and linings yourself. There is infinite
variety.
For some, this inevitably creates a hierarchy of taste. Talk
magazine's recent feature on Birkins decreed that the must-haves were
the bags made of the firmer leathers. It is possible to spend $4,000
and still feel inferior.
Back in the real world, on the Eurostar home, the ordinary luggage
that fills the racks looks - for a while, at least - dowdy and mean.
But that passes. The Birkins are undeniably great bags, but the price
is quite simply, nuts. 'The cost is ridiculous,' admits Birkin-owner
Kate Betts. 'Prohibitive and ridiculous.'
The economics of scarcity means that the price rises. And price equals
exclusivity, equals frenzied demand, equals more scarcity. The
company's finickiness has become a perfect marketing strategy - though
of course Hermès despises the muckily worldly term 'marketing'.
'Wealth,' wrote JK Galbraith in The Affluent Society , 'has never been
a sufficient source of honour in itself. It must be advertised, and
the normal medium is obtrusively expensive goods.'
The strange thing about a Birkin is that though the price is downright
obtrusive, the product itself is usually remarkably unostentatious.
Aficionados sneer at the shinier crocodile-skin models, preferring the
heavier, practical-looking leathers. In our heavily branded world, the
discreteness of a Birkin is an elitism of its own.
'No! It's not a snobby thing.' Helen Fifield, the publishing director
of House and Garden, is aghast at the idea. 'They really are worth it.
All the other companies make bags that are so high fashion that if you
can use it you use it for a season and then it's over. A Hermès bag,
any Hermès bag, is absolutely timeless. And they're beautiful.'
Fifield should know. She owns three, a Kelly, a Constance and a Birkin
that her husband bought her for £2,300.
Those who love them swear they're the most practical bags they've ever
owned. 'It's not like a pair of shoes that are going to wear out, or a
suit that's going to get shiny over the arse - it's something you've
got for life,' says the Vogue journalist who bought hers
surreptitiously.
Kimberley Fortier, publisher of the Spectator, peers into her Birkin
and lists the contents: Evening Standard , Harriet Harman's report on
asylum seekers which she's been carrying round for days hoping for a
chance to get around to it, a Louis Vuiton make-up bag, a mobile
phone, a Telegraph 2001 diary, a chequebook and a large marble egg.
Her husband moved heaven and earth to get her a Birkin within two
months, sneaking her into the shop one night after closing to allow
her to examine the bag, only to have her say: 'It's the wrong one.
It's light brown. I want the dark brown one.' The fact that he didn't
sue for divorce still amazes her.
She dreads the idea that the Birkin should become so fashionable.
'Because I desire neither to be in fashion, nor out of fashion. I
simply wish to have the handbag that I want to have.'
Because, in the end, becoming too fashionable could wreck the discreet
one-upmanship of the Birkin. But there are other drawbacks too. One
high-ranking executive tells a story about the time she approached a
top media magnate for a pay rise. Unfortunately she had her Birkin
with her at the time. Said media magnate took a look at her accessory
and turned frosty: 'Anyone who can afford that bag,' he said, 'doesn't
deserve a pay rise.'
suburb of Pantin in 1992. Inside its sleek white walls, the true
idiosyncrasy of the Hermès venture becomes apparent. Emile-Maurice
Hermès - creator of the first Hermès handbag - may have liked modern
designs and creations such as the zip fastener, but he loathed Henry
Ford's Johnny-come-lately ideas for mass production. Part of the
Hermès cachet is that each product is still individually handmade.
In the huge workrooms here, 250 skilled workers - men and women - sit
carefully at desks surrounded by the normal clutter of modernity -
minidisc players and photographs of their kids. But their tools are
the same as have been used for hundreds of years. Between their knees,
they clutch the giant wooden pince-à-coudre which grip the bags as
they work on them with awls and needles, patiently stitching and then
polishing the seams with large lumps of beeswax. For all the frippery
that surrounds them, the bags are famously robust. They are hand-made
using saddle-stitch - two needles passing across the seam in opposite
directions.
Each worker guards his or her own tools carefully. Retiring craftsmen
sometimes chose a favoured pupil to pass their set on to. It takes
about five years to become skilled enough to be let loose on your own
Birkin bag. Employees typically have been trained for three years
before arriving here, and will usually work with a more experienced
craftsman for another two.
A single bag will take about 18 hours to complete, from cutting to
finishing. Each carftsman works on a single handbag themselves.
Printed discretely on each bag in gold ink is a code which identifies
the worker who made it, the year it was made and the particular
atelier it was made in, allowing the Arthur Negus's of the future to
determine any bag's provenance. That's part of the cachet. This
particular workshop, here in Pantin, is denoted by the letter X.
Workers bend over their workbenches in quiet concentration,
interrupted by the occasional banging of an awl. In the 21st century,
these ranks of artisans, busily practising skills that nearly every
other modern industry has abandoned, make an incredible sight. This is
part of the mystique you buy into with a Birkin. Whatever Birkin
devotees say, you could buy something just as practical in nylon, but
with an Hermès bag you're buying a distinctly un-21st-century ideal of
permanence.
'It could be done with a machine,' says Bertrand, 'but if it was, it
would not be Hermès any more.'
In a corner, a leather-worker sits patiently polishing blemishes from
a 35-year-old bag. Customers can send them back here to be renovated.
Mothers pass theirs on to their daughters.
In the leather store a few streets away, some of the finest hide in
the world waits to be cut. Fork-lift electric trucks loaded with piles
of skin labelled 'Veau evercalf' and 'Box noisette' drift past
silently. 'Oh happy cows,' murmurs one visitor, 'to give your life for
a Birkin.' Here, laid out on acres of huge, wide shelves are alligator
skins from Florida, buffalo hides from Pakistan, crocodile skins from
Australia, goats from India, sharks from Thailand and lizards from
Malaysia. Here oxen, goats, deer and calves have all surrendered their
skins. All the hides are painstakingly tanned and dyed every colour,
pattern and texture imaginable. Hermès has cornered world supplies for
some of the finest leathers on earth. If Adam gave names to all
cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field,
Hermès found a way of turning them into stylish accessories. 'You
wouldn't want to bring Stella McCartney in here,' mutters a
delightfully indiscreet PR.
Around 80 coupeurs work cutting the skins. Only the best parts are
chosen. Neck areas and flanks where the grain is not perfect are
chucked in the bin. It takes two ostriches to make a single
ostrich-skin Birkin. Only the best back-skin is used for the crocodile
bag. The slightest blemish is tutted over and rejected.
The care lavished on each bag is remarkable. Adjusting supply to meet
demand is not an easy option. Hermès is lobbying the French government
vigorously to try to persuade it to loosen the employment laws that
prevent their workers from working more than a 35-hour week. They have
a powerful weapon: last week Bertrand hosted a tour for a large group
of politicians' wives who came to coo and gape at the fabulous Hermès
bags.
Back at the store, elegant Japanese women in Manolo Blahnik shoes pore
over 'the book' - a sample book of all the leathers. One of the
biggest selling points of Hermès bags is that you can chose the
combination of leathers and linings yourself. There is infinite
variety.
For some, this inevitably creates a hierarchy of taste. Talk
magazine's recent feature on Birkins decreed that the must-haves were
the bags made of the firmer leathers. It is possible to spend $4,000
and still feel inferior.
Back in the real world, on the Eurostar home, the ordinary luggage
that fills the racks looks - for a while, at least - dowdy and mean.
But that passes. The Birkins are undeniably great bags, but the price
is quite simply, nuts. 'The cost is ridiculous,' admits Birkin-owner
Kate Betts. 'Prohibitive and ridiculous.'
The economics of scarcity means that the price rises. And price equals
exclusivity, equals frenzied demand, equals more scarcity. The
company's finickiness has become a perfect marketing strategy - though
of course Hermès despises the muckily worldly term 'marketing'.
'Wealth,' wrote JK Galbraith in The Affluent Society , 'has never been
a sufficient source of honour in itself. It must be advertised, and
the normal medium is obtrusively expensive goods.'
The strange thing about a Birkin is that though the price is downright
obtrusive, the product itself is usually remarkably unostentatious.
Aficionados sneer at the shinier crocodile-skin models, preferring the
heavier, practical-looking leathers. In our heavily branded world, the
discreteness of a Birkin is an elitism of its own.
'No! It's not a snobby thing.' Helen Fifield, the publishing director
of House and Garden, is aghast at the idea. 'They really are worth it.
All the other companies make bags that are so high fashion that if you
can use it you use it for a season and then it's over. A Hermès bag,
any Hermès bag, is absolutely timeless. And they're beautiful.'
Fifield should know. She owns three, a Kelly, a Constance and a Birkin
that her husband bought her for £2,300.
Those who love them swear they're the most practical bags they've ever
owned. 'It's not like a pair of shoes that are going to wear out, or a
suit that's going to get shiny over the arse - it's something you've
got for life,' says the Vogue journalist who bought hers
surreptitiously.
Kimberley Fortier, publisher of the Spectator, peers into her Birkin
and lists the contents: Evening Standard , Harriet Harman's report on
asylum seekers which she's been carrying round for days hoping for a
chance to get around to it, a Louis Vuiton make-up bag, a mobile
phone, a Telegraph 2001 diary, a chequebook and a large marble egg.
Her husband moved heaven and earth to get her a Birkin within two
months, sneaking her into the shop one night after closing to allow
her to examine the bag, only to have her say: 'It's the wrong one.
It's light brown. I want the dark brown one.' The fact that he didn't
sue for divorce still amazes her.
She dreads the idea that the Birkin should become so fashionable.
'Because I desire neither to be in fashion, nor out of fashion. I
simply wish to have the handbag that I want to have.'
Because, in the end, becoming too fashionable could wreck the discreet
one-upmanship of the Birkin. But there are other drawbacks too. One
high-ranking executive tells a story about the time she approached a
top media magnate for a pay rise. Unfortunately she had her Birkin
with her at the time. Said media magnate took a look at her accessory
and turned frosty: 'Anyone who can afford that bag,' he said, 'doesn't
deserve a pay rise.'
Great article, chateleine. 
This is the one I always quote where the boss
wouldn't give his employee a raise because
she (gasp!) owns a Birkin.
LOVE this quote.
This is the one I always quote where the boss
wouldn't give his employee a raise because
she (gasp!) owns a Birkin.
LOVE this quote.
Back in 2001, I read an article in Talk Magazine about buying the "wrong" birkin, a "soft" leather one by the writer and how she felt cheated as it wasn't desirable. Been searching high and low for it ever since. I don't agree with the writer, as we TPF'ers all know that each birkin leather has its own beauty. I've finally found the article on bagsnob.com and just wanted to post for everyone:
http://www.bagsnob.com/images2007/flaccidbirkinarticle.pdf
http://www.bagsnob.com/images2007/flaccidbirkinarticle.pdf
I just read this... ...I had no idea that 'floopy' could be a bad thing.
So that would be Togo or Clemence she has?Is this hierarchy for all H leather bags and goods or just for the Birkin?
I understand how some go for only exotics but I didn't know there was such drama in the other category as well.
Oh this is beyond funny, in such a sick sense of humor kind of way...
http://www.tmz.com/2008/05/05/giorgio-armani-fine-leather-goods/
http://www.tmz.com/2008/05/05/giorgio-armani-fine-leather-goods/
