1 week Ago By Alice Newbold
Victoria Beckham has a healthy appetite for Hermès Birkins . We don’t need this Pulitzer prize-winning piece of journalism to remind us of this. But, unlike her fellow hungry collectors (we’re looking at you Cardi B and Kim Kardashian), Beckham has a distinct way of styling her lime-green, Tippex-white and exotic-skinned holdalls that hints she has the monopoly on that elite brand of one per cent chic.
In Beckham’s world, Hermès bags aren’t saved for best, but slung over the arm of a businesswoman with four kids and a schedule holding each minute to account. These butter-soft babies are politely stuffed, but left undone, suggesting an on-the-go lifestyle does not facilitate the neat buckling of one’s gold Hermès hardware. She might need to whip out her Victoria Beckham Bitten Lip Tint at a moment’s notice! There’s an art to leaving one’s Birkin unclasped.
No one actually wants to peep inside and see the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink essentials that are necessary to function as an adult in the world. One must be Mary Poppins without looking like Mary Poppins. Despite juggling kids, vertiginous heels, voluminous hair extensions (during the WAG days) and a clutch of invasive paparazzi cameras in her face, we never, ever see anything peeping out of VB’s Hermès bags thanks to the wonderfully pliable foldover top (OK, we once witnessed a monogrammed Louis Vuitton package saying hello while Victoria was striding through the airport, but how fab!) This laissez-faire attitude towards the most luxurious leather goods on earth harks back to the handbag’s origins.
Named after Jane Birkin, the story goes that the famously bohemian style muse was sat next to Jean-Louis Dumas of Hermès on a flight and asked him, “Why don’t you make a handbag that is bigger than the Kelly but smaller than Serge’s [her lover Serge Gainsbourg] suitcase?” Jane then drew him a sketch of her idea on the aeroplane sick bag , and the Parisian house actioned her request for a holdall that wouldn’t make her look as haphazard as her signature basket. While Beckham’s style is aeons away from Birkin’s, there are parallels between two powerhouses who have moved through the fashion sphere in their own way. Despite putting her name to her own line of leather goods, Beckham also has a penchant for Hermès Kelly bags, treating them with the same air of nonchalance as their big sisters.
The teeny-tiny trapeze cross-body version VB prefers is barely big enough to house an iPhone, let alone a couple of Posh Glosses, and so, the potential for precariously spilling the contents of one’s Kelly is high. Not so for this style icon, who traverses speedboats and casinos with her padlocks unlocked and her essentials somehow glued discreetly inside. The exorbitant sum and seemingly impenetrable waitlist for Hermès bags will hinder anyone hoping to emulate that same level of insouciance while carrying the French fashion emblems, but let this article show that it’s not bagging a Birkin or Kelly that matters, it’s how you wear them.
Ditto their descendant, The Row’s Margaux tote, which is best left slouchy and shrugged over the shoulder, à la Zoë Kravitz. What’s the point in spending thousands if your handbag sticks out like a sore thumb?.
