When French actress Jane Birkin’s first handbag sold for a whopping $10 million at auction on July 10, 2025, the world paused. Jaws dropped again when Birkin’s second personal Hermès Birkin bag, known as the “Le Birkin Voyageur,” sold for $2.9 million at a Sotheby’s auction in Abu Dhabi on December 5, 2025. The third time, the world did not bother. In fact, the auction for Jane Birkin’s third black Hermès Birkin, given to her best friend of sixty years, opened with a cool $140,000 estimate and turned into a major flop.
This Hermès “Birkin,” offered as the headline lot of the “Icon(s)” sale at Hôtel Drouot in Paris on December 15, 2025, failed to find a buyer, according to Ouest France. Unlike the original prototype, this was a later personal Birkin, rich in story but not a once-in-history artifact, which narrowed the buyer pool fast. If you ask me, with people lining up outside stores and waiting years to grab one Hermès handbag, this no-show still felt shockingly anticlimactic after the record-setting $10 million moment.
Even Japanese collector Shinsuke Sakimoto, who splurged that mammoth amount on Birkin’s Birkin, reportedly contacted the Orne Enchères auction house the week before, with requests handled via the buyer’s financial director, but no one showed up on sale day. The bag, consigned by her best friend and photographer Gabrielle Crawford, remained unsold. Crawford was expected to donate the proceeds to the Jane Birkin Foundation. “Gabrielle Crawford is exceptional on a personal level,” said auctioneer Patrice Biget of Orne Enchères, adding that because she continues to trust them, they were keeping the bag for now and would see if offers came in elsewhere.
In total, Hermès gifted Jane Birkin five bags, most of which she eventually sold for charity. This Birkin 35 in black Box calf leather with gold-tone hardware was gifted to photographer Gabrielle Crawford, whom Jane met in 1964, reported Vanity Fair. The bag is a peek into the life Jane lived, a companion in the true sense of the term. Gifts from all over the world hung from the handles, bells and Japanese lucky charms among them. Yes, the bag weighed a ton, but Jane and it were inseparable. So inseparable that even today, the bag seems to be refusing a new owner. It is kismet, perhaps.
