An Hermes Birkin bag costs $10k minimum, average $60k. They’re super high status. Guest wanted one from soon after she moved to NYC’s upper east side, was walking towards another woman on the sidewalk, and the other woman instead of getting out of the way oriented to sort of direct her to walk into a garbage can. Then brushed her with her bag on the way past, which she thinks was a Birkin. She thinks it was the bag that gave her this power.
But the weird thing is, even if you have the money for a bag it’s really hard to get one. There’s a waiting list for the waiting list. Hermes says this is because the bags are so hard to make. They’re made from unusual leathers like crocodile and ostrich, they’re hand stitched, and you have to train for years to make them. Lolno, if they wanted to make more they’ve had 30 years to build up a supply chain. Actually they just want them to be scarce because it makes them higher value.
Guest had a friend give her advice, apparently if her husband went into a store saying he wanted to buy it as a gift that might help. But no luck. Eventually he found one in Japan: they said they didn’t have any, he said he needed it, repeat a few times (which is super rude of him for Japan), and eventually they sold one to him. Another person found that the trick was if you’re already spending thousands of dollars in an Hermes store, and pretend it’s an afterthought when you say “oh do you have any Birkin bags?” they’ll sell you one.
The other weird thing is that the bags are actually kind of underwhelming. They don’t look that great. But host still finds herself impressed, feeling like because other people love them maybe it’s something wrong with her that she doesn’t see it. Uses words like sacred and religious to describe the experience of actually holding (maybe just seeing?) one.
Everyone in this episode is aware of how ridiculous they sound.
If you google “most valuable thing in the world,” it shows you a bunch of lists of fancy items covered with rare gems. I think civil engineering and infrastructural projects are much more valuable than these things when we talk about utility and how much value people can get out of them. It’s also useless if their utilitarian values aren’t being put to use. Efficiency and practicality also plays a huge part. A lot of those Middle East oil countries built a lot of skyscrapers in the middle of nowhere. They probably would’ve stretched their money a bit if they didn’t just copy existing civil engineering designs and came up with something that makes more sense given their own local ecosystem.
Planet Money: Bagging the Birkin
An Hermes Birkin bag costs $10k minimum, average $60k. They’re super high status. Guest wanted one from soon after she moved to NYC’s upper east side, was walking towards another woman on the sidewalk, and the other woman instead of getting out of the way oriented to sort of direct her to walk into a garbage can. Then brushed her with her bag on the way past, which she thinks was a Birkin. She thinks it was the bag that gave her this power.
But the weird thing is, even if you have the money for a bag it’s really hard to get one. There’s a waiting list for the waiting list. Hermes says this is because the bags are so hard to make. They’re made from unusual leathers like crocodile and ostrich, they’re hand stitched, and you have to train for years to make them. Lolno, if they wanted to make more they’ve had 30 years to build up a supply chain. Actually they just want them to be scarce because it makes them higher value.
Guest had a friend give her advice, apparently if her husband went into a store saying he wanted to buy it as a gift that might help. But no luck. Eventually he found one in Japan: they said they didn’t have any, he said he needed it, repeat a few times (which is super rude of him for Japan), and eventually they sold one to him. Another person found that the trick was if you’re already spending thousands of dollars in an Hermes store, and pretend it’s an afterthought when you say “oh do you have any Birkin bags?” they’ll sell you one.
The other weird thing is that the bags are actually kind of underwhelming. They don’t look that great. But host still finds herself impressed, feeling like because other people love them maybe it’s something wrong with her that she doesn’t see it. Uses words like sacred and religious to describe the experience of actually holding (maybe just seeing?) one.
Everyone in this episode is aware of how ridiculous they sound.
If you google “most valuable thing in the world,” it shows you a bunch of lists of fancy items covered with rare gems. I think civil engineering and infrastructural projects are much more valuable than these things when we talk about utility and how much value people can get out of them. It’s also useless if their utilitarian values aren’t being put to use. Efficiency and practicality also plays a huge part. A lot of those Middle East oil countries built a lot of skyscrapers in the middle of nowhere. They probably would’ve stretched their money a bit if they didn’t just copy existing civil engineering designs and came up with something that makes more sense given their own local ecosystem.