Deep within the vaulted art deco domes of Phnom Penh’s sprawling, sweltering Central Market, the light of flickering fluorescents illuminate – of all things you’d expect in the world – Birkin bags. Lots and lots of Birkin bags.
Rows of jewel-tones – blinding Bleu Izmir, Rose Scheherazade and Lime, shining despite the dim of low-wattage lightbulbs – are flanked by more sobering swatches of blacks, golds and greys, all stacked upon racks that soar up to the ceiling. By the looks of them, they might as well have been fruit fresh off the farmer’s market three blocks down, the local women manning the stalls bearing the equally casual countenance of said fruit-sellers.
If only she hadn’t looked you dead in the eye and asserted:
“Togo. Palladium hardware. 95 dollars.”
Magical words, uttered with the same reverence of a sommelier rattling off vintage fine wine, by someone who otherwise appears to lack any discernible grasp on the English language. Haggle her down and you can walk away with your very own 30cm in Rouge Casaque for $40. A Himalaya Crocodile Birkin that would set you back roughly $125 proves to be a honey-trap for tourists.
And as I eye a snakeskin-printed B35, wondering if I’d somehow missed the python page of the Hermès dispatch, the seller solemnly declares: “Snake. Very expensive.” Perhaps she deemed me unworthy of such ostentation.
Nonetheless, a far more efficient process than at the Hermès boutique.
Some 9,834 miles away, tucked away within the palm-fronds of Southern Florida, Privé Porter Miami offers an almost equally saturated array of the newest, rarest Birkins on any given day, only these are worth well into the millions. And at the time of writing, The RealReal lists over 800, yours to be had at the click of a mouse, and a 10% discount code at checkout.
“As far as fairy tales go, this is the glass slipper everybody wants to have,” I wrote last year. What happens when everybody starts living that fairy-tale?
The Muse and the Masterpiece
Of course, the Birkin backstory is a myth we can all, by now, recite in our sleep. That AirFrance flight, the overturned Portuguese fisherman’s basket, Jean-Louis Dumas and the sketch on a stomach-distress bag, and of course, the Birkin bag that was beat to sh*t. The same one that went on to sell for $10.1 million last year, frayed corners and scuffed piping notwithstanding.
But what often gets left out of the legends is that Jane Birkin herself spent the rest of her life being quietly haunted by the confounding thing.
Birkin may have made the bag – or at least, inspired it – but then it took off with her name. “On my obituary,” she told Sunday Morning’s Anthony Mason, “it will say, ‘Like the bag.’” When stopped and asked, she’d often reply, “Yes, and the bag is going to sing now.” Former paramour, Jacques Doillon, once told her mid-argument, “It’s terrible for you to be known for your object.”
Now she’s known exactly for that.
Yet, unlike Michael Jordan, who negotiated himself into a billion-dollar sneaker empire the same year, Birkin never saw a centime in royalties. Hermès, after all, famously doesn’t do celebrity campaigns or A-lister endorsements; it does “friend of the house,” which is a lovely way of saying: thank you for the free advertising, here’s a free front-row seat.
Or in Birkin’s (rare) case, the free bag that eventually overtook her entire identity.
The Purse of Theseus
“Once upon a time,” writes Amy Wang, “Theseus slew the Minotaur and sailed triumphantly home to Athens on a wooden ship. The vessel was preserved by Athenian citizens, who continually replaced its rotting planks with strong, fresh timber so a pilgrimage to Delos could be made each year in their hero’s name.” But at what point, dear reader, does it stop being the same ship?
And what if, wrote Thomas Hobbes, “someone rustled up a second boat out of the discarded planks; would you now have two original vessels?”
Our modern-day Theseus, Charli XCX, similarly ponders upon her ship, brat, on Substack: “when something that starts off as specific and niche and a true expression of a person then becomes popular, it still has the potential to suffer a death of it’s initial cool but not because of popularity alone, more because of the things that sometimes happen en route to popularity.”
Theseus was also never known for his prowess in punctuation.
But much like the brat of Charli XCX and the ship of Theseus, the Birkin of Jane Birkin has now taken on a life entirely its own.
“I was watching a clip on social media about Orange County,” former Real Housewife Bethenny Frankel told Amy Odell, “and the bags are a character. The bags could be Housewives themselves.” On Netflix’s Selling Sunset, Birkins are connective tissue between plot-points. Cardi B and Kris Jenner store theirs in climate-controlled klosets. “Top off any look with a Birkin – the older the better, just like your husband and your money,” TikTok star Tinx (Christina Najjar) says in her infamous Rich Mom Upper East Side reel.
A reformed (and anonymous) Birkin owner later confided to Odell, “I didn’t like seeing my bag on the Kardashians.” “A Birkin,” scathed Successful_Gate4678 on Reddit, “is not a substitute for a personality.”
In other words, every plank of the original ship has now been replaced, every ounce of Jane Birkin’s original essence moodboarded… to oblivion! “The more time passed from the album release,” Mrs. XCX contends of brat, “the more and more bastardized the representations of the album became.”
Of course, the ship still floats – at $13,500 and climbing – but is it still the ship? And what of Hobbes’ argument of discarded planks, you ask?
Well, Labubus exist for a reason, you know!
The Emperor’s New Bag
Now, much like Privé Porter, London-based Love Luxury is a purveyor of marquee Birkins in brand new or excellent used condition. Unlike Privé Porter, however, Love Luxury also has a YouTube channel.
“It is just too painful to keep,” tragedizes a bereft rich lady in one of the videos, attempting to offload a Birkin from a former paramour, “Oh, and the stickers are still on… Can I get $50,000 for it?” It’s pure entertainment, just as much as it is also an education of the economics of scarcity.
Would Hermès approve of its secrets thus being spilled? Unlikely. But then again, the most damning of declarations comes from within – a former Paris employee Odell interviews: “When you have a Birkin, you just scream to people, ‘Look, it was hard for me. You can’t have it and I can have it.”
Plus, YouTube and TikTok is now overrun with tutorials demystifying Hermès’ mysterious hazing rituals: “Spend X amount of money on other goods – especially other goods your sales associate suggests – and you’ll get the bag,” echoing Michael Tonello’s 2008 bestseller, Bringing Home the Birkin: My Life in Hot Pursuit of the World’s Most Coveted Handbag.
“It’s so hard to get your hands on an Hermès Birkin bag,” reported CNN, “that it should be illegal,” referring to the California lawsuit alleging the brand of unlawful tying practices. And while it’s true that Birkins do remain desirable (the plaintiffs, after all, just want a bag), Business of Fashion notes, “wearing those styles has begun to feel like a signal of mainstream taste and brand obedience — an unquestioning willingness to play the “Hermès game”— where it used to more clearly signal style, access and discernment.”
As a result, reports Truss Archive, where Birkin and Kelly resale prices sat at roughly 2x retail throughout 2021 and 2022, by the final quarter of 2025, that premium had shrunk to 1.4x. UBS analyst, Zuzanna Pusz, who downgraded Hermès stock last year, titled her report, “One bag too many.”
And within the cramped, sweat-slicked corridors of the Central Market as I watched the Birkin’s mystique vaporize between the Real Housewives and realistic superfakes, I couldn’t help but wonder:
Jane Birkin would probably find all this very funny.
