Behind the paywall:
Is Hermès really “stalking” potential Birkin buyers?
The bag you can’t get without a roughly 1 million euro pre-spend in Hermès boutiques.
How wealthy shoppers keep the Birkin game going.
Loose Threads
My social feeds have been completely overrun with commentary about Jonathan Anderson’s second Dior men’s show at Paris Men’s Fashion Week. I’ll have more robust coverage of his first couture attempt next week but briefly: The only reason I can come close to “getting” it is because it has the same flavor as Dario Vitale’s Versace debut! Between the color palettes, the purposefully ugly denim, the belts, and some of the proportions, these collections just belong in the same universe. I predict that Vitale’s collection will be one of the most influential come the fall 2026 ready to wear season. Vitale remains without a job but I don’t think that will be for long.
Elsewhere at the men’s collections: Jayden Smith debuted as Christian Louboutin’s men’s creative director. Don’t @ me but I think people will want this stuff and we’re going to see it all over red carpets.
Pharrell’s Louis Vuitton show set included a house, made in collaboration with architecture firm Not a Hotel, which Pharrell named Drophaus and doubly employed as a promotional vessel for his furniture line Homework (admittedly, a very fine name for a furniture line). He told Architecture Digest: “I grew up around water, I’m drawn to it, I build and create my best work close to it. Drophaus is based on a water drop, so if you stand back and take the roof and the ceiling off, it’s just a drop.” I do like this shirt from the collection that looks like it has sparkly little drops of water on it. Would wear for Zooms.
Phoebe Philo’s new collection dropped. Are you ready for rounded-toed pumps?
If Emily in Paris were a pair of pajamas she would be these by Printfresh.
And now, today’s big story…
The Birkin Game Isn't That Complicated
Nothing taps into the insecurity of the luxury buyer quite like Hermès’s Birkin and Kelly sale process. If you’re not getting a bag, according to lore, it could be because of something about YOU. Your house, your watch, your vibe.
The thought cuts deep.
The practices behind sales of these so-called “quota bags” — which customers are generally limited to purchasing twice a year, in part to discourage reselling — even inspired a U.S. lawsuit alleging antitrust violations. The crux of the argument was that the company wrongly prioritized sales to customers who spent a certain amount in the stores each year, to which the judge responded: If Hermès “chooses to make five Birkin bags a year and charge a million to them, it can do that.” (The plaintiffs appealed the ruling.) Glitz Paris recently reported that in order to determine who should be deemed worthy of buying a bag, sales associates looked up customers’ addresses, which unsurprisingly led to sensationalist headlines about how Hermès is “stalking” shoppers.
The Faubourg Birkin. (Photo: Edward Berthelot/Getty Images)
What these stories miss, though, is that determining who gets to purchase one of these five-figure bags (on the low end in the U.S.) isn’t about closely monitoring shoppers’ lifestyles. And the anxiety aspiring Birkin owners feel about the process doesn’t exactly stem from how well they conform stylistically, but rather the competition among an unusually large number of very wealthy buyers for a small number of bags. Hermès is able to set pre-spends to as high as a million euros (!) for certain quota bags simply because lots of rich people are willing to compete for them as though sport.
“Why would they stalk people?” a former Hermès salesperson told Back Row.
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