Birkin ridiculous
To paraphrase Jane Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single woman in possession of a good fortune must be in want of an extremely expensive handbag.
And a woman in possession of a (husband's?) bank account the size of Jupiter and a seriously under functioning scepticism gland must be in want of a Birkin. The iconic handbag made by Hermes and named for British actress Jane Birkin is now so sought after it commands a two year waiting list... or so they say.
As with all fashion stories, you really can't go past Sex and The City as an aside. SATC's Samantha Jones - who I might have credited with more chutzpah than to hanker for such a cliché - was told by a snooty Hermes shop assistant that the waiting list for a Birkin was five years, and when she questioned the sanity of waiting that long for anything - let alone a mere bag - the clerk's reaction said it all.
"It's not a bag. It's a Birkin". Our Sam might have done better if she'd employed the services of a certain Michael Tonello, whose delightfully titled book Bringing Home the Birkin has just released. Tonello managed to trounce the much-mythologised waiting list to purchase Birkins for private clients who couldn't be bothered to wait.
How? I hear you ask... Well, as with all things fashion, it seems all that was required was the ability to pose shamelessly. Tonello would go into a store brandishing his Hermes Ulysse notebook as if it held a buyer's list, then send the plastic spastic on accessories worth several thousand smackers, giving him the appearance of a regular Hermes shopper.
Having lured staff into his trap, he'd pull out his trump card and ask for a Birkin, which by this point they were presumably too embarrassed to refuse. Tonello's tome claims the Birkin waiting list is just myth, a bit like The Lost Ark, except more glamorous. And with prices rising to about $34,000 for a croc skin version, most of us have about as much chance of obtaining one as picking up the container of the covenant at our local luxury mall.
Hermes - no doubt as red-faced about the heist as staff on the Glasgow to London mail after the Great Train Robbery - has remained tight lipped, although it did somehow ban Tonello from purchasing any more Birkins. I'd love to know what the legal basis for such a clampdown would be, but perhaps Tonello doesn't care.
Apparently he never even liked the Birkin and began to feel like a drug dealer, dispensing it clandestinely to all those desperate fraud broads and label Mabels. Now he has turned to literature for solace, which brings me back to Jane Austen, who certainly knew about money, although history doesn't relate her handbag preferences.
"A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of," she wrote. Too right, but somehow I doubt she'd have wasted hers on a Birkin.
By Kat Walker