It’s quite blasphemous to start of an article dedicated to Jane Birkin’s Birkin to say that I’ve never actually been a fan of the Birkin Bag. In fact, I’m not much of a Hermes girl when it comes to bags, I know right, shocker. I’ve always thought the Birkin wouldn’t go with my lifestyle as I’ve always viewed it as a prim and proper upper class bag, not for the mass rapid transit trotting girlie that I am. Plus, it always gave me Math Teacher vibes, totally not my style, I thought. All that perception went out the window when I learned how the late Jane Birkin actually used her bag.
She uses it like how an everyday bag should be used – stuffed with her essentials nonchalantly, all scratched up with residue of the stickers from the causes she supported and decorated with trinkets from her travels. It shows how well she used her bag and to not fuss about it (granted that her Birkins were named after her and gifted, didn’t have to fork out $12,000 and be on a 5 year long wait list but you get the drill). This picture with her nail clipper hanging by the side was sending me. The juxtapose of a shiny nail clipper that looked like she probably got it from a convenience store across the street, dangling in a beat up Hermes Birkin with her initials embossed, thought me so much about her life and Jane as a person. All from just looking at a bag. It’s like a masterpiece created over time. So much that it’s displayed at exhibitions like Victoria & Albert Museum and Sotheby’s even after she has passed on. She lives on through her bag.
*Photo from Sotheby’s.
Jane Birkin on how she wears her bag:
Sourced from Vogue in 2011
On personalization: “There’s no fun in a bag if it’s not kicked around, so that it looks as if the cat’s been sitting on it—and it usually has. The cat may even be in it! I always put on stickers and beads and worry beads. You can get them from Greece, Israel, Palestine—from anywhere in the world. I always hang things on my bags because I don’t like them looking like everyone else’s.”
On restraint: “I never have more than one bag at a time. I think one is already quite enough. Also, I hate changing bags, so I never have the thing of having ten bags. Any bag that’s with me will take the same course as I will. It will take the same airplanes and will be squashed in the same way and will be used as a cushion in the airports.”
On the Birkin she’s carrying now: “It’s black, but it’s not dirty enough, and it hasn’t gotten any stickers on it. It’s rather more bumpy than the other one was, but the surface will soon get scratched about.”
On what she carries in her Birkin: “I’ve got my agenda, my BlackBerry, photos of all the children, and my makeup, which is all upside down. It’s the nice mess that I always like.”
On the popularity of the Birkin—both real and fake: “It’s very nice that everyone’s got one or wants one. I keep saying to Hermès to make it out of plastic or, even more fun, make it out of cardboard. Then it wouldn’t be so heavy. But if people want to go for the real thing, fine. If they go for copies, that’s fine too. I really don’t think it matters.”
On handing them down: “My daughter Lou does not have one. Personally, I think it would be a horrible thing to have a Birkin bag from your mother.“
Her Birkin is such an inspiration and reminded me of how I aspired to wear my designer bags long ago before I could actually could afford them. I wanted to travel the world with it, dangle keychains on it, fling it over my shoulder and run in the rain with it. I use to think that a designer bag was immune to the elements just because they cost an arm and a leg until I actually got them. I aspire to have that innocence again. It took me a while to let go of that fear of damaging my Noe until I fell on hard times and actually had to use it as a bag because my life depended on it. But I don’t think I can ever let my Saddle go through it, it’s the only one that still sits in it’s original dust bag. My only designer bag that has gotten the Jane Birkin treatment is my pochette and it has a ton of stories to share! I still love and use it till today more than a decade later and it’s priceless to me, I can never sell it even though it’s now worth 3 times more than how much I got it.
I’m so inspired that I took my Noe – which I’ve affectionately dubbed my old lady – out again and gave her Vachetta a good polish after years of sitting in my closet. One day when I’m long gone, I hope the water stains from the bandung drink spilled at Seah Imm, cracked corners from how I carry and lie on it and the tarnished metal that shows its age, will tell you how I lived my life and will be my legacy too.
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*Photo from Sotheby’s.
This is Jane Birkin’s Birkin bare from it’s stickers and trinkets. I wish it was left on although the residue and scratches are permanent signs, like a tattoo, it’s irreplaceable and undeniably hers. It’s a lesson to wear your bag and not let your bag wear you.
Are you inspired to wear your designer bags like Jane Birkin did or do you have one that you’ve given the Jane Birkin treatment to?
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