At the Artcurial auction house’s sale of vintage Hermès this week, an assistant balanced a chocolate-brown crocodile Birkin bag on his white-gloved fingertips as he paraded it around the room.
Bidding opened at €15,000 (about $22,500), and two clients calling in by phone furiously one-upped each other. Within less than a minute the price of the few-years-old bag had jumped to €25,000, shooting €5,000 past the high estimate and far more than the bag’s retail price.
The appetite for Hermès, vintage or new, has strongly resisted the slump in luxury….Continue Reading