Bringing Home the Birkin

by Michael Tonello

  “I’ll take it.”

  Thankfully, they didn’t make me sign away my soul (at this point, I probably would have). They did, however, produce a document from the Department of Fish and Wildlife, a kind of “passport” for the transport of exotic leather (I found out crocodiles are under some sort of protective measure—my thought was it couldn’t be too protective if they ended up as handbags all the time). I also, naturally, had to sign a credit card slip, which I was too scared to look at…I had averted my eyes and put it in my wallet to contemplate later. The bag itself had been priced at a reasonable $18,000, then you added in the scarves…oh boy.

  Twenty minutes later, I was walking down the street, sipping my complimentary bottle of Evian, a ludicrously large shopping bag hanging from my hand. What had happened in there? I wanted to tell everyone I knew about my Birkin victory—but I couldn’t figure what I would say when they asked me how I had done it. I had no goddamn clue. Had I performed a secret handshake without realizing it? I looked down at my clothes—same stuff I always wore. I had a nice tan from France, but a Birkin seemed like an awfully big present for being a little sun-kissed. And on top of all this, another mystery—how come a Birkin’s dustcover wasn’t Hermès orange?

  13

  The Formula

  A week later I was en route to Paris, trying to think like Nancy Drew, desperate to solve the mystery of the Madrid Birkin. I was playing Pony Express, Air France–style, hand-delivering the anthracite croc bag to Carole Bayer Sager at the Hotel Ritz. Upon receiving my “got one!” e-mail, she immediately responded with a very generous offer (through her assistant, of course) that netted me a tidy profit of almost $5,000.

  The question remained: what purse potion had I used to work such magic in Madrid? After all, I needed the recipe for that elixir in order to conjure more Birkins. Maybe I could land a security job at Hermès Madrid—that way I could hunt for the clues to my success in the surveillance tapes from that fateful Saturday. Or how about arranging for a covert rendezvous with that saleswoman in some shady bar. I could wear a trench coat and dark glasses, and our password would be “crocodile.” Or what if I staked out the store from across the street, and did exit interviews with everyone who left with a Birkin? Okay, so I wasn’t coming up with the most realistic scenarios—I guess you shouldn’t try to channel your childhood sleuth hero at 25,000 feet.

  At first I felt conspicuous entering the hotel lobby with a giant (orange) shopping bag. Then I realized: at the Ritz Paris, my Hermès bag was just one of countless dozens that revolved through the seemingly featherlight mahogany-and-glass door each and every day. Carole was staying in the Coco Chanel suite and had instructed the front desk to send me right up. She opened the door with a big smile, the warmth of her welcome catching me slightly off guard. You’d think she’d known me for a dozen years, rather than through a dozen e-mails. But she seemed nothing if not sincere—the first word I would have used to describe her was “kind.” I felt immediately at ease with her. I had agonized over what to wear, but needn’t have; she was dressed casually in a white cotton blouse and jeans, although both the sheen of the cotton in her shirt and the tailor-made fit of her jeans hinted at money. (The huge pink diamond on her hand hinted at nothing.) Once I had unearthed the bag from its box, and handed it to her, Carole immediately stepped over to the nearest Tiffany-shaded lamp to inspect the skin. She examined the size and symmetry of the crocodile scales, and finally smiled broadly, praising both the color and overall quality of the bag. I got the feeling this wasn’t her first Birkin, that’s for sure.

  The suite itself was what you would expect from the Coco Chanel suite at the Ritz Paris…At $4,500 a night, I knew it wouldn’t be Motel 6. The sitting room I was in was roughly the size of an Olympic swimming pool. However, it had the intimacy of a Renaissance tearoom and was decorated with the exquisite taste of a baroness. It was full of authentic Louis antiques, their dark carved wood covered in sumptuous, down-filled pillows. The atmosphere of luxury was reinforced by the richness of the heavy grosgrain cloth in the giant draperies that framed the view of the Place Vendôme. However, what struck me most was the oh-so-elegant touch of silver trays piled high with red strawberries. I waited, but the whole time I was there, as hospitable as she was, Carole never offered to feed me one.

  I returned to the lobby without a bag of any sort. I had handed over that hard-won handbag without even a twinge of loss. Despite my lingering questions about how I would repeat the feat of buying one, I had newfound confidence in the ease of selling one. After my afternoon sojourn in Coco’s old stomping grounds, I wasn’t quite ready to leave the opulence of the Ritz. I decided to celebrate my Carole coup with a glass of Champagne in Bar Hemingway. After a moment spent studying the writer’s artifacts and photos that were framed on the back wall of the tiny bar, I settled in on one of the tall stools. I realized it wasn’t quite right to order Champagne in this place (I don’t think old Ernest would have approved) and ordered a sidecar instead. Since my mom was the best-read person I knew, it was only appropriate that I call her from this literary landmark.

  “Mom, hi…I’m at Bar Hemingway, at the Ritz. Yup, I’m already in Paris. Just brought Carole her bag…Oh my God, the suite was amazing…and she’s the nicest person on the planet…” I couldn’t get my story out fast enough, but, excited as I was, I tried to keep my voice discreet. In this bar, you could be sitting next to anyone—I didn’t want to give some Parisian Liz Smith her scoop of the week. (I knew if I were a gossip columnist, I’d be sure to hit the Hemingway on my way home.) I wasn’t about to lose my best (and only) Birkin client.

  “What did she say? Did she like the bag? What was the suite like?” My mom was all questions, so I dished her all the details, right down to the strawberries I didn’t get to eat. But there was something else on my mind.

  “You know, it’s funny, I still am not sure how I actually got the bag in the first place.” I laughed a little as I said it, but I think Mom heard the frustration I couldn’t help feeling.

  “Michael, give it time and I’m sure it will come to you. Just think it over, think about every detail, and you’ll stumble over it eventually.” Her voice was calm, as always, but instead of soothing me as it usually did, for some reason I got a little testy.

  “Mom, listen, I walked into the store like I always do. I was greeted by name, sure, that was new, but I don’t think they sell you a Birkin because they recognize you. If so, Barcelona would have handed it over a lonnnng time ago. I walked in, I handed them my wish…lists…” I stopped. I really hoped my mother hadn’t noticed how small my voice had gone, or, if so, that she would blame it on the overseas connection. Unfortunately, this was the age of the cell phone, and she wasn’t fooled for a second. (She also, having given birth to me, knew me better than anyone in the world. I hate to sound cliché, but come on, this was my mother.)

  “Michael, what is it? Something wrong? Or did you think of something with the bags?” I could hear her trying not to sound too smug. I knew that she could see my mental lightbulb through the phone somehow.

  “Nothing’s wrong, Mom…yeah, I might have figured it out. I’ll let you know tomorrow. Bye, love you…Bye.” It was one of those moments when putting it into words might make it sound ridiculous. (Although really, what about this whole Birkin thing wasn’t ridiculous?) The simple fact was, this entire time I’d been thinking about the ingredients, and all the ingredients were exactly the same. Every time I went to Hermès, there were wish lists, and scarf ambassadors, and my plea for a Birkin. I knew I shouldn’t have cut all those chemistry classes in tenth grade to smoke in the parking lot. Because I’d almost forgotten that in chemistry, the order in which you add the ingredients to the formula is as important as the ingredients themselves.

  14

  Smoke and Mirrors

  The following morning I awoke bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and bursting to buy a Birkin. I decided that the Hermès flagship store at 24 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré was not t
he right place to try out my Birkin-buying hypothesis for the first time. That six-story building housed not only two floors of Hermès products, but also corporate offices, design workshops, and a private museum. At this point in my purse game, I found the place a teeny bit intimidating. I decided to start small (at least square-footage-wise): I’d go to the Hermès store on Avenue George-V. It would be a perfect staging area for my revised Birkin-buying script.

  As I cabbed over, I tried to find the holes in my theory. Last night, the sidecar swimming through my veins, the breakthrough moment I’d had while chatting with Mom had been flawless—inarguable in its logic. Of course, it had also seemed like a good idea to drunk-dial Juan at one in the morning, even though he had to teach English to high schoolers at some ungodly hour (thankfully, he hadn’t minded, or at least pretended not to). So, I supposed it was possible that my judgment had been a wee bit skewed in other ways as well. Minutes before trying out my new plan, I had doubts—did all of my agonizing and analyzing really distill into a conclusion this banal? Because the “formula,” as it were, was simply this: first the wish lists, then the Birkin. I’d been going about it all wrong. Trying to get an Hermès employee to sell you a Birkin before dropping a bundle on other things was like trying to sleep with your prom date before you’d even complimented her hair. That’s how I’d nailed it in Madrid…I’d gone scarf shopping first. Once that Hermès employee saw I was already dropping well over a grand, she was more than happy to put a Birkin right on top of that pile. You needed an initiation fee, a qualifying purchase. (This is what I was hoping, anyway. I was about to see how my scientific stratagem held up to experimentation.)

  When the cab pulled up in front of Hermès, I wiped my sweaty palms on my Bottega Veneta jeans, swallowed the knot of anxiety in my throat, and strolled through that door like I owned the place—and every Birkin in it.

  A salesman smelled money and immediately approached me.

  “Good morning. I have a rather long list of scarves I’m looking for, and perhaps you can make this easier for me,” I said as I handed him my wish lists.

  “Certainly,” he said, his manner immediately obsequious, no doubt his natural response to the length of the list. “Most of these scarves are older issues, I’ll have to look in the back.”

  I refrained from saying “Surprise, surprise.” My MO in stores was to appear as “fish out of water” as possible. I wanted everyone to assume I was on a mission for my mom. Part of that whole low-profile thing. I was standing there, trying to look uncomfortable yet arrogant, when my salesman returned bearing a tray full of scarves. As he touched each scarf, he indicated its position on the wish list. He had about seven or eight of the designs I was after. I hoped it would be enough. (The precise amount I needed to “qualify” was, of course, still a gray area.)

  “Okay, great, perfect…I’ll take all of them…[here goes nothing]…and do you have any Birkins?”

  “Sir, I’ll have to go check. I won’t be a moment.”

  Surprise, surprise—again. Did these guys work from a script or what? I just hoped there wasn’t going to be a plot twist at the end. All I wanted was a sequel to Madrid. When he returned bearing a large orange box, I knew all my hopes had been answered. And formula or no, I was loving this movie. He performed the whole grand show I had seen a week or so ago (no white gloves, though—those were just for croc bags). My bag this time was a 30cm blue jean leather Birkin. I didn’t care if it was a six-inch rainbow plastic Birkin—I wanted to buy it and get the hell out of there before some kind of double-dipping alarm went off in the store. And that’s exactly what I did.

  Safely back at the hotel room, I put the bag on the bedside table and waited for it to do something. Surely these bags had some kind of magical powers. I knew now that I did—today, I was the Harry Potter of handbags. I had the ability to perform a trick that was much better than pulling rabbits out of hats—I knew how to pull Birkins out of Hermès. (I mean, we all know how rabbits are—you never had to wait two years to get more of them. More like two minutes.) It was like any other sleight of hand—once you knew how it was performed, you couldn’t remember why it had mystified you in the first place. And simple as “the formula” was, there sure were a lot of people on “the waiting list,” languishing away quietly, tortured by their unfulfilled quest for pricey leather purses. Well, languish no more, people—help was on the way. I couldn’t wait to start my new life as an Hermès Houdini—I was going to make Birkins appear all over the world.

  15

  Road Trip Redux

  I decided to “redo” the south of France trip. I was hoping, just this once, that the second time would be the charm. I was still nervous about whether I would be able to keep pulling off this Birkin-buying thing. It was so absurd, really—worrying about whether you could buy a purse. But, I should confess, it wasn’t just the money I was anxious about…I definitely dug the idea of beating Hermès at its own game. Maybe it was silly, but I found it exciting to think I had knowledge that had eluded even the wealthiest people in the world. I had never equated money directly with power, but if you are over ten years old, you can sense that there is a connection. And any human who could pay $20,000 for a purse was in the ninety-ninth percentile of income, no doubt. An Hermès customer, at least a repeat one, was someone who rarely looked at price tags, or worried about bills, or thought about money at all, really. But for all that, Hermès still had their “waiting list.” You almost had to respect the company for its sheer balls: their customer base was not a demographic that was accustomed to waiting. But they waited for Birkins. And I didn’t—or so I hoped.

  I dug through an armoire drawer and fished out the MapQuest route from my last trip. I threw together some outfits and packed up the suitcase. Now that I finally had a laptop, I could keep an eye on my eBay auctions…this trip was going to be purely business (except, perhaps, for the cuisine). Three hours later, I walked into the Hermès Montpellier shop. Thirty minutes later, I walked out with a Birkin ($7,500). An hour later, I walked into Aix-en-Provence Hermès. Thirty minutes later, I walked out with a Birkin ($7,500). One hour after that, I walked into Hermès Avignon. Thirty minutes later, I walked out with a Birkin ($7,500). On my way out of that third store, I couldn’t help but do a little gleeful math. If most people wait two years for a Birkin, and I can get one in about a half hour, that meant I’d trimmed the wait time by about 17,519 hours (and a half ). Then my mind, without a hint of glee, coughed up some other inarguable figures. Between my three credit cards, each with a $10,000 limit, I had about $5,000 worth of credit still available. In one day, I had maxed out two credit cards (and half of another).

  I was almost out of credit and almost out of daylight (and completely out of energy). I checked into a hotel. As soon as I was alone in the hotel room, just me and the Birkins, I booted up my computer. I had the supply, and now I just needed to create the demand. I fired off an e-mail to everyone in my Hermès wish-list Rolodex:

  From: Armoire_Auctions@yahoo.com

  Subject: BIRKIN AVAILABLE

  To: “everyone”@my-yahoo-address-book.com

  Hi everyone, AVAILABLE TODAY:

  BIRKIN 35CM, TOGO LEATHER, BLACK WITH GOLD HARDWARE. BIRKIN 30CM, TOGO LEATHER, VERT ANIS GREEN, SILVER “PALLADIUM” HARDWARE. BIRKIN 35CM, TOGO LEATHER, ROUGE VIF WITH GOLD HARDWARE.

  ALL THREE BAGS ARE BRAND-NEW, UNUSED AND TOTALLY STORE-FRESH. GUARANTEED AUTHENTIC. AVAILABLE ON A FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED BASIS.

  CALL OR EMAIL ME.

  All the best,

  michael

  I looked at the trio of Birkins to relay the exciting news about their impending adoptions, but they weren’t acting so enthusiastic, so I called my mom to give her the good news.

  “Hey, Mom, it’s me. Just wanted to let you know I solved the mystery about buying these bags.”

  “Oh, good, I knew you would. So you’re home now?”

  “Um, actually, I’m in Provence, but I’m sitting here looking at the three purses I ju
st bought today. Turns out if I spend a lot of money first, it’s a lot easier to get the bags.”

  “Well, that’s great, sweetie…I can’t talk right now, though, your father and I have a tee time in about six minutes. I’ll catch up with you later and you can tell me the whole story…Love you…Bye.”

  I tried to call Juan and tell him all about it, but he wasn’t home. I sat there, deflated. All pursed up and nowhere to go. I guess it isn’t that much fun to be Houdini unless you have a lovely assistant at your side, or at least a rabbit to talk to. But, realistically, I knew I should be concentrating on banking, not bragging. Within ten minutes of hanging up the phone, I had transferred $10,000 from my bank account to pay off a MasterCard. I could get a couple more Birkins now—crisis averted. The credit thing was going to be an issue, though, no question. Well, I’d figure something out. Now, it was finally time to celebrate, not mull over credit limits. But no sooner than I was heading out the door for a drink and a bite to eat I received a couple of e-mails. One Birkin sold! The second e-mail was from Grace.