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Anyone read Bringing Home the Birkin, by Michael Tonello? I may have just finished it, though I am not sure. It has some good anecdotes but is written in such an insultingly bad style that I couldn't read it through and so skipped around it in multiple attempts. So I am not sure if I have read all or just most of it. STill it was entertaining in sections. The book is about the authors' adventures buying "rare" handbags from Hermes shops around the world and reselling them to collectors. The most interesting facet of the book was the idea that someone could buy an Hermes Birkin bag at full retail and then make money flipping it at a profit. I can't quite fathom why a handbag would command a premium but, obviously, it does. PArt of the reason seems to be that Hermes claimed supply of the bags was very limited, creating artificial scarcity. Obviously, the scarcity was false as the author figured out he could buy a handbag if he spent about $1,000 on other stuff first (what he called his "Birkin Bait"). The author even managed to make a profit flipping the Hermes knick knacks he bought at full retail as his ticket to the Birkin purchases. Thanks to this board, I have been educated that Hermes may, in fact, make the best or amongst the best handbags in the world. What I don't understand is why a particular style of bag would become a status symbol. It brought about an interesting discussion with my wife about who would carry a birkin and who wouldn't. For example, she explained that moms at one school we had considered for our kids would likely carry birkins where moms in another would not. One of her friends, who liked to drape herself in diamonds, was not a Birkin woman (that isn't her world), whereas another one would love a birkin if she could have one. It was all very curious to me as I could not imagine how a particular handbag could convey status. My own experience with women's handbags has been limited to buying one for my wife from Loewe when we are in Spain, nearly buying one for her, which I am sure wasn't a birkin, at Hermes, chewing her out for buying a real Coach bag instead of a fake one and thinking I was being clever by having an April in Paris catalog sent to her only to have her toss it out without even mentioning it to me. Plus I once accompanied her to the "endangered species room" at Suarez in their old location. I can see how some bags are better made than others and some sizes and shapes and colors have different uses, but the fashion aspect escapes me. Who cares if the bag is rcognizable as made by LV, or Hermes or Goyard, or Botega or Kooba or whoever? It seems fundamentally different then male fashion, such as it is, which is focused on either a look or a brand name, but not on a particular item by a particular manufacturer (I think this is right - some of the SW&D guys can correct me). In any event, I can recommend borrowing the Bringing Home the Birkin book to anyone interested in a glimpse into a bizarre world. But please don't buy it. The author is grating enough as is and I would hate for him to think he should write another book (our copy was pre-read, forwarded by one of my wife's friends as part of an informal trash book reading club).
