The Birkin Problem

8/27/2026

I possess a particular theory that we are all waiting for our lives to begin.

We save the shoes for the special event. The perfume for the date. The wine for when a guest comes over. The nice plates for the dinner that is important enough to use them for.

I write this as I have an expensive bottle of wine that has been begging to be opened for 4 months. I am much too indecisive to determine if it’s a special enough night for it.

How incredibly silly.

We buy beautiful things and then spend so much time trying to preserve them that we forget to actually use them.

We wait for the right body, the right relationship, the right apartment, the right vacation. We wait for something to happen that will make the thing we already own worthy of being used.

This has become an epidemic we are all guilty of. I say fuck your special occasion.

There is something almost strange about the way we treat our things now. The more expensive something is, the more carefully we seem to protect it from the very thing it was made to do.

And I keep thinking about Jane Birkin. It is almost funny that one of the most coveted objects in fashion history was named after a woman who seemed to have very little interest in treating it like a precious object.

The story has become fashion folklore. Birkin happened to sit next to Jean-Louis Dumas, then the chairman of Hermès, on a flight from Paris to London. She was carrying a wicker basket and complained that she could never find a bag large enough to hold everything she needed. Her belongings spilled onto the floor, and the conversation eventually became a sketch.

A handbag designed around a woman who needed a handbag.

The first Birkin was created for her in 1984. And she used it, like really used it.

Her initials were stamped into the leather. She hung a nail clipper from it. Stickers found their way onto the surface. It was filled with the miscellaneous evidence of a life rather than carefully arranged to maintain the appearance of one.

She did not seem particularly concerned with keeping it pristine, which is perhaps the most ironic thing about the Birkin.

The bag that would eventually become a shorthand for exclusivity, wealth and extreme luxury began as something deeply practical.

Jane Birkin didn't treat it like an investment, she treated it like a bag. And maybe that is why her original Birkin became so fascinating.

In 2025, her original bag sold at Sotheby's for $10.1 million. The very things that would make most of us panic over a new luxury bag—the scratches, the stickers, the evidence of use—became part of its value.

The bag was valuable because it had lived.

We are so accustomed to believing that perfection is what makes something valuable. Keep the box. Keep the receipt. Don't scratch it. Don't spill anything. Don't wear it too often.

Preserve it.

I think we forgot that our possessions are supposed to become ours. A beautiful thing should eventually carry evidence of the person who owns it.

A favorite sweater should soften in the places you touch it most. Shoes should crease where your feet bend. A leather bag should develop the little marks of the places you have taken it.

The coffee stain should remind you of a morning spent with a lover. The lipstick at the bottom of your bag should remind you of a night out. The scratch on your shoe should mean you walked somewhere worth walking to.

Maybe the best things we own are not the things that remain untouched. Maybe they are the things that become slightly ruined because we loved them enough to use them.

But now, more than ever, we don't just own things. We display owning them. Maybe that is what Jane Birkin understood instinctively.

She didn't need the Birkin to remain perfect because she already had something better. She had the life that happened around it, and she certainly did not wait to use the bag for a special occasion.

So I say wear the dress to dinner on a Tuesday. Put on the perfume because you are going to work. Burn the expensive candle while you are cleaning your apartment. Use the good plates when you're eating leftovers. Take the beautiful bag to the grocery store. Open the wine because you made it through Wednesday.

Let it get scratched. Let it become yours.

Because what exactly are we waiting for?

There will always be another occasion. Another birthday. Another wedding. Another vacation. Another dinner. Another version of ourselves that feels more deserving of the beautiful thing we bought six months ago.

But there is also today. And maybe we have the order wrong.

Beautiful things aren't supposed to wait for beautiful lives. They are supposed to make ordinary lives feel beautiful.

Jane Birkin's Birkin was scratched, stained, overfilled, and lived in. And now those imperfections are worth millions.

Which makes me wonder if perhaps the real luxury was never the bag. Maybe it was the freedom to use it without worrying about what it would be worth later.

Maybe luxury is not having something nobody else has. It’s being able to enjoy what you already have.

To stop saving your life for later.

Fuck your special occasion.