This story originally appeared at BBC.com
As a pop-up handbag auction opens in London, a fashion frenzy is gripping venerable auction houses – and sending prices sky high. Can fashion ever be on a par with a Picasso?
“I like my money where I can see it. Hanging in my closet,” says Carrie Bradshaw in the 2000s TV series Sex and the City, and it would appear that an increasing number of collectors do, too, with archival fashion auctions fetching record prices. Just last month, Sotheby’s auction house in Paris sold a battered Hermès bag owned by its namesake, Jane Birkin, for £7m ($9.2m). And now Sotheby’s in London has just opened a luxury pop-up salon, auctioning pieces by Hermès, Rolex and Cartier, running until 22 August.
But it wasn’t always like this. Many auction houses have traditionally viewed their fashion divisions as tangential, with the brand-name recognition of some of the items drawing buyers in, and towards bigger-ticket items like paintings or sculptures.
Shouldn’t clothing be worn? Jane Birkin certainly had no qualms about using her Hermès bag
Clothing belonging to celebrities, like Princess Diana or Marilyn Monroe, have historically fetched more than garments without a celebrity provenance, though nothing quite like the £7m Birkin bag. Monroe’s infamous “Happy Birthday Mr President” dress, known as the world’s most expensive dress, sold in 1999 for $1.3m, and again in 2016 for $4.8m to Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum. It currently resides there when it’s not being taken for a spin by Kim Kardashian, who wore it to the 2022 Met Gala. Cora Harrington, fashion historian and author, says the dress’s association with Kardashian will likely increase the value the next time it comes up for auction, despite any wear and tear caused by the star.
“I think that would have been true regardless of whether Kim wore it because it’s Marilyn Monroe, but there are enough fans of Kim Kardashian that would likely result in a higher price,” she tells the BBC. “Usually when an object is damaged it would devalue it, but it’s the opposite in this case.”
“Dupes have driven more people to buy authentic,” says Michael Mack, president of Max Pawn Luxury, which has one of the largest collections of Hermès bags for sale in the US. “It’s not just Gucci, Hermès or Chanel; we sell Coach, Michael Kors and Kate Spade. Those are $300, $400, $500 bags and we do big business in that.” And it’s not just big-ticket items like the $180,000 and $240,000 Himalayan albino crocodile diamond-encrusted 25cm Birkins he’s sold to celebrity clients, Mack adds.
Read the full story at: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20250731-is-7m-pounds-for-a-handbag-absurd-or-justified