“Oh, I’m sorry, sir, we don’t have any right now. We can put you on a list, perhaps…” Oh no. This couldn’t be happening. I had bought how many of these things, and now, when it mattered, I couldn’t get one? I was utterly defeated. I could barely get the words out.
“Well, I really want to get everything in one place. I can go by the Bal Harbor or perhaps the Palm Beach store once I get to Florida, one of them will have a bag for me I’m sure.” I eased away from him, hoping he didn’t notice my voice was slightly choked up.
I didn’t leave the store for some reason, though, not right away. I wanted to pull myself together, and I wasn’t sure what to do. Should I buy her something else? A “less desirable” Hermès handbag? They certainly had plenty of them. While I lingered in the handbag department, I saw a couple come in, a man and woman of indeterminate age, nothing flashy in their appearance, both with rather strong Russian accents. I watched, somewhat intrigued, as they piled up three pieces of luggage, plus crocodile shoes and matching croc belt. Easily more than $30,000 worth of merchandise. While her husband made transport arrangements for the luggage pieces, the woman stood casually at one of the display cases, seemingly waiting for him. But as it turned out, she was waiting for something else, because while I stood watching, a saleswoman walked over to her with two Birkins for her to choose from. I don’t know why I was so angry, but at that moment, I was. And more than angry: I felt betrayed. Betrayed by my salesperson, betrayed by my formula, but mostly betrayed by myself. I was a loser, a loser for not having enough money to drop in Hermès NYC and get my mom her Christmas gift. Why hadn’t I gotten a Birkin? It was simple—I hadn’t spent enough. Here in Manhattan, the stakes were higher. Why hadn’t I thought of that? And what good was it that I had gotten Birkins all over the world, and couldn’t get one now, when it mattered? The “it boy” of the “it bag”? What a joke that was. I was nobody, at least here in New York. And nobodies didn’t get Birkins. I should have known that by now.
I didn’t get my mom anything that day. In fact, once I calmed down and got out of my self-hating funk, I realized she never would have wanted a Birkin. She found the price of the bags sort of ridiculous, actually, even though she could have afforded one. My mother never cared what other people wanted, and the idea of a “coveted” purse was alien to her. I don’t know exactly why I had thought otherwise, except that Birkins were so desirable to everyone I dealt with that I somehow forgot not everyone longed for one. Certainly not my mother. And I had been a complete emotional wreck, so perhaps I hadn’t been thinking clearly.
I decided to go with the less expensive Berlingot, a sportier bag that Sarah happened to have in stock at the time. Since she wintered in Palm Beach, the DeluxeDiva herself made an “emergency holiday delivery” to my parents’ house outside of West Palm. Of course, my mom never knew that wasn’t the original plan. She was thrilled with the Berlingot, her very own Hermès handbag, and stood up proudly, albeit unsteadily, to model it on Christmas morning. That was the only time I ever saw her holding it. My mother went into the hospital the day after Christmas, and she never really came home, the rest of her life a blur of hospitals, nursing homes, and, at the end, hospice. I was at her side as much as I could be, and that was a lot, thanks to my unconventional work life. She passed away a scant but endless six weeks later, in February. I remember wishing that we were up north, instead of in Florida, so that the weather outside would have matched the gray bleakness I felt inside on the day we lost her. Instead, I had to shield my eyes from the tropical sun, as well as from everyone around me. I was inconsolable. We all were.
After the quiet memorial service my family had decided on, Juan and I returned to Barcelona. (He too had been to Spain and back numerous times, once flying in for just two days. He was a keeper, for sure.) I tried to get back to normal, but as a few weeks passed, one thing became very clear to me. I didn’t like my job anymore. It all seemed so frivolous, the way things can after you lose a loved one, only maybe even worse in my case. I tried to rally, and went on a couple of bag-buying missions, but nothing was the same. I didn’t know if my malaise was a phase, or what. Juan was worried about me, not just because of my grief, which was normal, but because I had confided to him that I had difficulty dealing with even the most rudimentary tasks of my business. I ignored e-mails and phone calls all the time now, totally out of character. I was miserable. Even the cats couldn’t cheer me up.
Then, one day, I received a faxed letter, from Serge, of all people. (He knew nothing of my mom’s passing, because I hadn’t gone to Paris since I lost her.)
Dear Sir:
Owing to serious problems with the supply of skin qualities necessary to the manufacture of your items as well as of production, we are really sorry to inform you that we have today no other options than canceling your orders, i.e.:
1 Fuchsia lizard Kelly clutch bag
1 White bull calf, 30cm, Birkin bag
1 Fuchsia goatskin, 36cm, Haut à Courroie bag.
With our most sincere apologies for not being able to give you satisfaction and thanking you in advance for your understanding, we remain,
Sincerely yours,
Serge de Bourge
Leather Department
Repeated calls over the next couple of weeks to the store (as well as to Serge’s cell phone and home phone) got me nowhere. No return call, no response at all. I somehow doubted that Hermès was out of leather. I did figure out that I wasn’t completely busted as a Birkin reseller, since I went and bought a couple of bags in France the week after I got his missive. It was likely that it was just the Faubourg that had finally figured things out. Either way, it didn’t help my state of mind. Serge had been a friend, not an enemy, and I had never done a thing to hurt him. The coldness, his refusal to even talk to me, stung somehow. I wanted to call someone as down-to-earth as they come, and as Mom was no longer an option, I went with the next best thing: Kate.
She had been my bedrock friend during my mother’s illness, her patience and understanding likely owing to her own experience with the untimely death of her brother. During those hellish weeks, she reminded me to eat, and sleep, and breathe, and calmed me down when I railed against the doctors, and reassured me when I confessed my own feelings of helplessness. And when I spoke with her now, as usual, her advice was simple. She told me I needed to drop everything, at least temporarily, and get out of Dodge. No Birkins, no BlackBerry, no eBay. And no Juan, since he was working, anyway. As we talked, she extolled the benefits of such a journey. Mulling it over after we hung up, I decided she was right. But I needed to pick carefully where to go.
Back in my life Before Hermès (B.H.), right when my hair and makeup company had started to take off, I took a celebratory vacation in Greece. I explored Athens for a few days, and then took a five-hour ferry ride for a stopover on the island of Sifnos. As soon as my foot hit the island, the rest of my travel itinerary went out the window, as did my desire to go back to work—I stayed there for three weeks, basking in the near-heavenly natural environment and reveling in the low cost of just about everything.
I didn’t want to go back to Sifnos, because I didn’t want to take any chance of marring my almost overidealized memories of that first vacation. I did realize, however, that the Greek Island pastiche of soothing green waters and amnesia-inducing sunshine was exactly what I needed. I also had a secret fantasy that if I stared long enough at the side of one of the brilliantly white buildings dotting the islands, my future would appear on it as a slide show, bright and clear in my mind’s eye, like some sort of Zen trick.
I settled on Mykonos. It was less isolated than Sifnos and had something of an urban vibe. The prospect of a larger cross section of cuisine, as well as a decent shopping district, also appealed to me for this trip (I didn’t know how long I would stay, and I didn’t want to go stir-crazy). For my living quarters, I wanted privacy. And privacy I got, preserved not by some ugly barbed wire fence, but by 110 stone steps—the stairs you had to t
raverse to reach my hilltop cottage, which overlooked the sea and the village from a peacefully removed distance. (When the realtor showed me the place, she advertised the 110-stair walk down to the village, but cautioned me on the 110-stair walk back up.) The view was unreal, the nights quiet, and the solitude unsullied. I’d made the right choice for my sabbatical.
I limited my outings to one a day, for obvious reasons. I went down the hill in the early evening, to dine at whatever restaurant I’d plucked from the guidebook that afternoon. It was always a minor miracle if I found my pick—usually, I confusedly wandered one of the many narrow streets that wound their way through the town, until eventually I ate somewhere out of sheer hunger. (It’s no wonder those Greek heroes were superb at labyrinths, let me tell you. They live that shit on a daily basis.) It was on one of these twilight-time sojourns that the blessed anonymity of my vacation was forcibly, if temporarily, shattered. In staunch defiance against all odds governing probability, I ran into someone I knew. And, unfortunately, it was not someone I was longing to reconnect with.
I recognized him from behind, at a distance of nearly fifty feet, not something I can usually do with a casual acquaintance. However, in the very particular case of Lakis Gavalas, it was a pretty simple matter. It wasn’t that he was really fat or really tall or something else physically arresting like that. No, Lakis was just really…decorated. Exactly like the last time I saw him, he was a mobile Hermès accessories department. I watched him teetering down the street in his mincing way, tethered to a teeny-weeny Hermès backpack. “Backpack” was really a misnomer; although technically it was something one could carry on the back, it wasn’t something one could actually pack—not unless you were packing, say, a toothpick, a tampon, and a Tic Tac. Maybe that’s why he also held a (much roomier) pale gray croc Birkin in the crook of his arm, which I spotted as I drew nearer. My faster pace meant I would soon overtake him on the road, and I braced myself for the meeting. I considered briefly putting on my sunglasses, as I remembered being blinded by his teeth the first time we met. I finally drew up alongside him and greeted him politely. (To finish off the accessories collection, he wore a croc belt, but his ruby-and-diamond dragonfly brooch was probably not Hermès—I guess he wanted to diversify.) Fortunately, Lakis wasn’t all that excited to see me either, judging by the limp hand he extended me and the brevity of our chat. His only real comment was on the shopping bag I carried from my gift-buying foray into Lalaounis (a jewelry store made famous by Jackie Onassis).
“Ooooh, I bet you bought something beyootiful…I love their things…I have the entire collection,” he bragged. “Well, this is my shop, you see, and I am expected…nice to see you again, Michael…” With that, he sashayed into the handbag-and-clothing boutique we were in front of, where the mannequins modeling his designs peeked out at us from behind the windows.
I looked up at the storefront and read the sign: LAK. (Surprising he would name it after himself—he was generally so unassuming…yeah.) I breathed deeply, willing myself calm, concentrating solely on the sweet puffs of island breeze and lingering warmth of sunset hour. I couldn’t understand why I was so riled up by my chance meeting with Lakis. After a couple of glasses of ouzo at my chosen eatery, I finally relaxed enough to realize what it was. He was a prime example of what wearied me in this whole Birkin world. Here was a man, truly a talented designer, so insecure in himself that he lived like a walking billboard. He had more than two hundred of the bags alone, not to mention all the other Hermès items of adornment he collected—and why? To what end?
I had met some exceptional people over the last few years, some of them with collections to rival his, some of whom I considered close friends. But for every sweet Ellen, or entertaining Sarah, or brilliant Grace, there was a person whose obsession with Birkins and scarves bordered on sheer narcissism. Every day I fielded frantic phone calls and pleading e-mails from people who lacked for nothing, but who longed for more. I wasn’t going to be one of them. I wasn’t going to spend my time making money I couldn’t enjoy the way I wanted to, wasn’t going to live my life away from my home and boyfriend. What was the point of that? Losing my mom had brought about this revelation faster, but I think it would have come eventually.
The truth of it was, I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t keep the Lakises of the world happy, no matter what I did—after all, Hermès would always keep making new Birkins, new scarves, new stuff. I was sick of having the often thankless duty of window washer in the Hermès skyscraper. It was definitely over for me.
I had no regrets—it had been a lucrative, if lunatic, way to earn a living. I had also traveled to many of the world’s most desirable cities, eaten some unbelievable cuisine, drank a lot of expensive wine, and had millions of dollars of luxury merchandise pass through my hands. All because I knew how to do one important thing—I knew how to bring home the Birkins. But I was ready—ready to hand off the orange crown to the next eager globe-trotting bag buyer, whoever that might be. And I had a couple of stories to tell at cocktail parties, that’s for sure. Hey, maybe I should write some of the crazier ones down before I forgot them—what else did I have to do, drink ouzo?
Glossary of Hermès Terms
25CM, 30CM, 35CM, 40CM: the Birkin is produced in a variety of sizes; the numbers refer to the length in centimeters across the bottom of the bag
BAGMATI: a large cashmere shawl, tissue-thin, light as a feather, and costing about $1,000
BARENIA: a fatty natural leather with an untreated surface. Considered a classic Hermès leather and always seems to be in short supply
BIRKIN: a leather handbag produced in a variety of skins, designed to be a carryall for working or traveling women. Named for the actress Jane Birkin, who codesigned this bag along with Jean-Louis Dumas Hermès in 1984
BLEU ROI: French for royal blue
BLUE JEAN: light sky blue
BOLIDE: a name for a particular handbag model with a zipper that runs across the full length of the arched top. Originally called Bugatti but later changed for legal reasons
BRAISE: a bright, rich red color of dyed crocodile used in the making of handbags and small leather goods
CHÈVRE: goatskin
CITES: Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. An international agreement between governments; its aim is to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival. Hermès furnishes customers who live outside the country of purchase with a CITES document when they buy an item made of crocodile, alligator, lizard, or ostrich
CLOCHETTE: the small bell-shaped leather cover that hangs from a thin leather strap (usually hung from the handle of a bag) and houses the key for the handbag’s lock
CLOU: metal foot on the bottom of an Hermès handbag
CROC: short for crocodile (also used as slang for any crocodile or alligator species)
ÉTRUSQUE: medium reddish brown color for leather goods
FAUBOURG: the location of the original and flagship Hermès store in Paris, in the Eighth Arrondissement. The actual address is 24 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré
GEORGE-V: the avenue where one of the three Hermès shops in Paris is located
KELLY: a handbag made famous by Grace Kelly after a photo of her carrying the bag appeared on the cover of Life magazine back in 1956. The Kelly has one handle (whereas the Birkin has two) and can be carried on the shoulder with an optional shoulder strap (whereas the Birkin cannot)
HARDWARE: the locks, zippers, and other metal fittings on the handbags
HAUT À COURROIE: the original and taller version of the Birkin, this bag was designed in the early 1900s to carry a horse saddle. It is also produced today in a variety of handbag sizes
PALLADIUM: silver-colored metal hardware on the handbags
PARIS BOMBAY: a handbag that looks similar to a fat baguette
PASHMINA: typically a blend of approximately 70 percent cashmere and 30 percent silk, used in the makin
g of shawls
PLAQUÉ: metal plates at the end of the leather sangles (straps). One plaque is inscribed with “Hermès Paris”
POIGNÉES: handles
PONTET: metal belt loop on the front of a Birkin that holds the sangles (straps) in place
POUDRE: a creamy beige color of dyed crocodile used in the making of handbags and small leather goods
RUTHENIUM: a gunmetal-colored shade of hardware used on leather goods
SANGLES: leather strap; term used both for Hermès saddles and handbags
TIRET: leather cord that attaches the clochette to the handbag
TOGO: leather with a small pebblelike grain to it
TOURET: small metal wheel that the lock attaches to
ULYSSE: a small leather notebook that comes in several sizes and has refillable pages
VERMILLON: red with an orange undertone, used for leather goods
Acknowledgments
To Laura Yorke and Cassie Jones for getting it from the get-go (and to Johnathan Wilber for helping to ice the cake).
To Dad, who gave me, among all other things, my sixth sense: humor.
To JCT, who will be on my side forevermore.
To Eddie for reading and Dottie for waiting.
To Kara Blood for her words.
To Riane, the youngest fan in the clan.
To Peach, who babysat the writer—twice.
To Gene and Elaine, for giving me the tools for writing.
To Barbara Smith, who always believed.
To Mica R. Bonner, for being the diamond in my clochette.
To Gala and Dali, the cutest paperweights a boy could have.
Bringing Home the Birkin Page 24
