oh handbag, where have you been?
One of my biggest gripes is when women place their handbags on my dining table or my kitchen counter. I don’t know where their bags have been and it bothers me ...
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the virtues of a birkin bag
text . Pauline Chan .
Posh Spice has about 100 of them. Jaime Cuaca has more (so we read in the delicious articles about her most expensive divorce in Singapore) and a friend of mine lusts after them. They can cost as much as a car and if you have one, you get instant recognition as a member of a privileged group of women with obscene amounts of money to spend on ostentatious receptacles and anything else in life.
The Hermes Birkin Bag is the ultimate luxury accessory. It is a status symbol. It is a statement piece that will get you admiring looks and instant fawning even when you are wearing gym clothes and accessorizing with beads of sweat. It is rumoured that a Birkin can get the owner special treatment all on its own merit as an ‘It’ bag. If you are spotted with a Birkin, you might get a special table in a restaurant or first-class attention in a shop. These days, an LV, Gucci or Coach will not buy you much bootlicking, not even from a DVD-shop salesgirl, but carry a Birkin and you can make that elevation from ordinary mortal to heavenly being. But remember, with great bags, come great responsibilities – one has to upgrade the rest of their existence to suit the bag. Don’t carry a Birkin and complain about the price of everyday things. There is no honor in flaunting a prized bag and then haggle over the price of a ream of photocopy paper.
Unlike the usual status-symbol designer bags that crudely announce their origins with large or repeated logos, the Birkin has no glaring birthmark. It looks like a quietly practical, capacious carry-all that has the same functional level as a Samsonite hand-carry luggage. So what makes a Birkin so hot?
First, a little history. This bag was named after the British-born French singer, Jane Birkin. Sometime in the mid-80s, Miss Birkin sat beside the president of Hermes, Jean-Loius Dumas, on a flight from Paris to London and complained to him about the inadequacies of her straw bag when the contents fell out. Mr. Dumas paid attention, came up with this timeless wonder-carrier with Miss Birkin in mind and named it after her.
Jane Birkin
Are Birkins highly recognizable? Well, yes and no. Carry a Birkin into Supa Save or Hua Ho and you might as well be carrying a neon-green rubber basket. No one will worship you as you mosey along the aisles. Carry the same bag into the ION on Orchard Road in Singapore and watch the eyes follow adoringly. Since it is logo-free, the Birkin is only recognizable to those in the know. It is the antithesis of the ‘It’ bag. To learn more, watch E! Entertainment fervently and you will be familiar with the celebrated bag as well as the celebrities who tote it.
Birkins are made entirely by hand and each bag takes about a week to complete. You can have one made to your specifications. You can choose the type of leather (including ostrich, crocodile, lizard), colour (every hue in the rainbow) and any embellishments to make it ‘scream’ louder than other Birkins. David Beckham reportedly bought one for his wife for 80,000 pounds - it has diamonds on it of course.
Priced between US7,000 to US15,000 for a ‘normal’ bag, it’s obviously not made for the normal folks. You want special editions? Watch the price escalate. The Hermes Birkin in Croc Porosus Lisse boasts 9-carats of diamonds with a 1.86-carat sparkler on the lock itself. It’s priced at US150,000 and according to Forbes Magazine, there are only a handful of these in the world.
Posh Spice has about 100 of them. Jaime Cuaca has more (so we read in the delicious articles about her most expensive divorce in Singapore) and a friend of mine lusts after them. They can cost as much as a car and if you have one, you get instant recognition as a member of a privileged group of women with obscene amounts of money to spend on ostentatious receptacles and anything else in life.
The Hermes Birkin Bag is the ultimate luxury accessory. It is a status symbol. It is a statement piece that will get you admiring looks and instant fawning even when you are wearing gym clothes and accessorizing with beads of sweat. It is rumoured that a Birkin can get the owner special treatment all on its own merit as an ‘It’ bag. If you are spotted with a Birkin, you might get a special table in a restaurant or first-class attention in a shop. These days, an LV, Gucci or Coach will not buy you much bootlicking, not even from a DVD-shop salesgirl, but carry a Birkin and you can make that elevation from ordinary mortal to heavenly being. But remember, with great bags, come great responsibilities – one has to upgrade the rest of their existence to suit the bag. Don’t carry a Birkin and complain about the price of everyday things. There is no honor in flaunting a prized bag and then haggle over the price of a ream of photocopy paper.
Unlike the usual status-symbol designer bags that crudely announce their origins with large or repeated logos, the Birkin has no glaring birthmark. It looks like a quietly practical, capacious carry-all that has the same functional level as a Samsonite hand-carry luggage. So what makes a Birkin so hot?
First, a little history. This bag was named after the British-born French singer, Jane Birkin. Sometime in the mid-80s, Miss Birkin sat beside the president of Hermes, Jean-Loius Dumas, on a flight from Paris to London and complained to him about the inadequacies of her straw bag when the contents fell out. Mr. Dumas paid attention, came up with this timeless wonder-carrier with Miss Birkin in mind and named it after her.
Jane Birkin
Are Birkins highly recognizable? Well, yes and no. Carry a Birkin into Supa Save or Hua Ho and you might as well be carrying a neon-green rubber basket. No one will worship you as you mosey along the aisles. Carry the same bag into the ION on Orchard Road in Singapore and watch the eyes follow adoringly. Since it is logo-free, the Birkin is only recognizable to those in the know. It is the antithesis of the ‘It’ bag. To learn more, watch E! Entertainment fervently and you will be familiar with the celebrated bag as well as the celebrities who tote it.
Birkins are made entirely by hand and each bag takes about a week to complete. You can have one made to your specifications. You can choose the type of leather (including ostrich, crocodile, lizard), colour (every hue in the rainbow) and any embellishments to make it ‘scream’ louder than other Birkins. David Beckham reportedly bought one for his wife for 80,000 pounds - it has diamonds on it of course.
Priced between US7,000 to US15,000 for a ‘normal’ bag, it’s obviously not made for the normal folks. You want special editions? Watch the price escalate. The Hermes Birkin in Croc Porosus Lisse boasts 9-carats of diamonds with a 1.86-carat sparkler on the lock itself. It’s priced at US150,000 and according to Forbes Magazine, there are only a handful of these in the world.
Of course, you can always start with the low-end version at $7,000 and work your way up. But how fast you want to go up will depend on the waiting list – you don’t just buy a Birkin off the shelf. You place an order and you wait, like a good girl, for it to arrive. It’s exclusivity and elusiveness is partly influenced by the waiting list. There used to be a two-year waiting list and well-heeled ladies could not land a Birkin even if they shoved their money into the cash register themselves. Not being able to get their hands on ‘The’ bag when they wanted it drove women nuts and ultimately made the Birkin insanely covetable, maintaining its lust factor even after 20 years since its introduction in 1984.
Katie Holmes
Kelly Ripa
Marc Jacob
The Birkin has such clout and power that even men are drawn to it. Micheal Tonello, a self-made socialite-watcher turned e-bay luxury reseller (especially in all things Hermes) and author of the breezy ‘Bringing Home the Birkin’, can ‘jump queues’ and get a Birkin on the same day. His secret, shared in his book, was to spend wads of money in Hermes, impress the sales staff and presto! A Birkin mysteriously becomes available. With that secret, he made a fortune reselling Birkins to women who could not wait in line for the bag. (Readers, in case you are wondering if Tonello can get you a Birkin, forget it. He no longer provides ‘The Bag’ service. Since his book came out, Hermes found out and Tonello bowed out.)
I think the Birkin is hot because it is well made, its design is timeless, its components are exquisite and it’s logo-free. Its quiet elegance makes it appropriate for any age and will look equally alright on the arm of Hilary Duff or Oprah Winfrey. I wonder if Hermes can make a Birkin from the skin of house lizards - those little pale-complexioned buggers poop all over my house and they are not helping to rid the mosquito that is bugging me. They should be useful for something else.
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