00:00In Paris, a handbag just made history. The first ever Birkin bag designed by French luxury brand Hermes for actress and singer Jane Birkin has been sold at auction for 8.58 million euros, nearly 10 million dollars. It's now the most expensive handbag ever sold.
00:30I didn't want this bag to be put in exhibition everywhere. I wanted to be very privileged and very specific places.
00:41I've been attached for 25 years to prove that we could put something in the museum, paintings, statues and objects of everyday life like a bag.
00:55The first Birkin is a prototype and he has all the features of a star. It's the first sack of the Hermes house.
01:02It's been made by Jane Birkin, everyone knows, but it's also been made by the Hoa Courrois that wore Serge Gainsbourg.
01:09And the fact of being able to democratize himself was the emblem of the history of the Hermes house.
01:18And I know that when we buy a Hermes bag to have lived it myself, we don't just buy a Hermes bag, we don't just buy a Birkin or a Kelly or whatever.
01:27We buy a part of the history and we become proprietors of a part of the history of Hermes house, which is, for me, the most important house of the Marokinerie.
01:36I don't know if it's so much money, you know, in the world, too much thing, too much money, but for the Birkin bag, the price is the price of the Hermes story.
01:46The price is the price of the handmade, you know, for the bag. So I think it's a good price for Birkin bag, the first one.
01:57This Birkin isn't just any bag. It was created in 1984 after a chance encounter on a flight between Paris and London.
02:07Jane Birkin told Hermes CEO Jean-Louis Damas that she couldn't find a practical yet stylish bag for everyday use.
02:15That conversation led to the creation of a now iconic design, a spacious leather tote, simple yet elegant, practical but luxurious.
02:25They named it the Birkin. Jane carried this very bag herself, customized it with stickers, used it daily and made it part of a personal style.
02:38We were expecting, we came with a budget of 2.2 million. We expected the sale price to be under 2 million and it blows our minds that it went for 8.2.
02:49I think Hermes has a universal appeal that as someone who's, my first Hermes bag was in 2005 and it was a milestone.
02:56I think that I even underestimated the universal appeal that it all has.
03:00And seeing the bidding going on from Dubai to Asia to New York to Paris has been really mind-blowing to me the power that Hermes has as a brand.
03:11It's worn leather, metal rings and initials JB tell a story of real use and real life.
03:19It's not flawless, it's lived in. And that's what makes it priceless.
03:24I think it's also the power of Jane Birkin as a brand. I think she has a lot of universal appeal as well and I mean she created the bag and she takes us back to an era where less was more, simplicity, elegance. She was elegant wearing a pair of jeans.
03:46Sold at Sotheby's in Paris, the bag sparked a fierce bidding war between eight collectors. The final buyer, a private collector from Japan.
03:56The seller, Catherine Binier, a Parisian vintage luxury expert said she was nostalgic to part with it but proud to see it valued as a piece of history.
