Beloved by some of the world’s most stylish women, the Hermès Birkin is often dubbed the most popular, covetable and expensive handbag of all time – costing the price of a house, in some parts of Britain.
But now, the handmade leather tote seems to have a less attractive claim to fame after becoming a favourite target of brazen burglars, leaving fashion fans terrified of showing off the once ultimate status symbol.
The desirability, price and rarity of the Birkin – with no more than 200,000 in circulation, resulting in an extortionately high resale value – has made the bag a must-have for not only A-listers and influencers, but also for thieves.
Former burglar and UK security expert Michael Fraser told FEMAIL that robbers ‘now want the Birkin at whatever the cost’. The accessories start at around £6,000 in store but have previously made upwards of $300,000 at auction.
‘They want it, and it is a target, and a popular one at that,’ added the expert. ‘This crime is so easy to commit, more of it will happen. We’re going through quite tough times at the moment.
‘People with designer handbags might as well have a light on top of it, flashing, saying “look at me” because that’s exactly what it does.’
Michael added: ‘It attracts the wrong sort of people, and they see the handbag, and then they’ll follow the handbag… If you’re not subtle about it, you’re a magnet. And they will target you.’
These safety concerns have been felt by British influencer Lydia Millen, who boasts more than a million subscribers on YouTube and 1.6million followers on Instagram. She has decided to sell her Hermès Birkin collection, thought to include at least four bags.
The content creator would previously film unboxings of luxury handbags, but admitted that over the last few years she edited her collection from 75 to 15 to try and feel safer about owning the designer accessories.
In a clip posted to her YouTube account in March, she explained how she would only ever keep two handbags at once in her house, while the others remained in a vault at a different location before being rotated from one to the other.
‘It felt good until it didn’t,’ said Lydia. ‘Until you realize that you’re walking around London and you’re scared. You’re turning your bag the wrong way around so that people can’t tell what bag you’ve got.
She added: ‘It wasn’t right to keep my bags at home. Probably wasn’t safe, lots of people were being robbed and those kinds of things so I started keeping some of my bags in a vault some of my bags at home.
‘… and I thought I’m not wearing these bags at the moment. I’m not wearing these bags as much as I used to in my old life, I’m scared to wear them, I’m looking online and I’m seeing content that I don’t love to feel like I’m part of and so I’m kind of going through a process of change at the moment.
‘I realized that I didn’t want to be putting myself when I’m out and about in danger. I’ve got a family, I’ve got sausage dogs that need their mum, I’ve got a horse that needs their mum… I’ve got chickens that need their mum.
‘And I’ve got a husband that needs his wife. Why would I do that? Why would I put things in my home that could make my home unsafe?
Lydia continued: ‘I don’t want to have to walk down the street and turn my handbag around. I don’t want to have to worry about walking from somewhere to somewhere in London.
‘I don’t want to have to worry about being alone on the streets of London which is the only time that I get to wear my my bags. I don’t want to worry about it, I want it to be carefree,’ said the influencer, who is also selling her Chanel and Louis Vuitton handbags, with some of the funds going towards charity.
But Lydia isn’t the only influencer with the Birkin that doesn’t feel safe showing off the designer tote.
Jessiestyle – a self-confessed ‘handbag-obsessed girl from Australia’ who posts to YouTube – shared with her followers how a ‘Birkin, it’s like putting a big target on yourself’.
The content creator added: ‘I feel like you don’t want to be a target and you don’t want to get mugged’, so she revealed to her followers how she isn’t comfortable going out in Melbourne with a designer handbag.
Other videos on TikTok show fashion fans putting the Hermès totes in other carrier bags, such as a Waitrose one, to hide their expensive accessory.
‘You just bought a Birkin but you live in London,’ one clip explained via its text, with the caption adding: ‘How to put your Birkin into safety mode.’
Meanwhile, the apparent fear surrounding owning the Hermès tote is clearly not just felt by influencers, with one person creating a Reddit thread four months ago which asked: ‘How to Hide the Birkin Bag Appearance’.
The poster explained: ‘For safety reasons and to avoid unnecessary attention, is there a way to carry a Birkin bag in hand while making it look like an ordinary bag?’
‘Put it in a shopping bag when you are in an unsafe area,’ one person suggested. ‘Turn the hardware towards your body. Get a Hello Kitty or a Michael Kors keychain to hang on it. No one would believe it’s a Birkin with those,’ said another.
A third added: ‘If you don’t feel safe, just don’t carry it. I wear my expensive bags when it is 100 per cent certain that I will drive to the location and I will not walk more than 500 meters.
‘If I need to use public transportation (which I have to, especially when I need to go to Hermès), I just wear one of my Kate Spade bags.’
A fourth commented: ‘I live in a big city where a lot of robberies are happening… I still want to wear my bags though, so I put my Birkin in a tote bag and take it out once I’ve arrived to the location.’
Another agreed, adding: ‘I have stuck it in a nylon tote bag… Even in a Shein canvas tote. No shame here. Security first.’
Federica Labanca, an influencer who reportedly owns a number of Hermès bags, told The Standard in 2024 that ‘you’d have to be crazy to flash a Birkin carelessly in town now’.
She added: ‘I’m really, really careful… I will keep my Hermès bags for Chiltern [Firehouse] and abroad.
‘I’m very conscious of the current London situation when it comes to watches, jewellery, bags, phones – everything really. If I know I’m going to Mayfair, Soho, Piccadilly or Knightsbridge I make sure I’m not wearing anything too flashy.’
Meanwhile, the wife of Man United goalkeeper Andre Onana was robbed in the street of her £62,000 handbag, alongside a Rolex watch, in the picturesque village of Alderley Edge – dubbed the ‘Knightsbridge of the North’ – on March 29.
Sources told MailOnline last week that the incident took place in the car park of an Italian restaurant. Liam Ross, a 25-year-old from the Wibsey area of Bradford, has been charged with the high-value robbery.
He appeared before Chester Magistrates Court on Friday. He is also charged with supplying cannabis and will next appear before Chester Crown Court in May.
Ms Kamayou describes herself as a pharmacist, businesswoman and philanthropist on social media, where she regularly posts pictures of her glamorous life with the footballer. She also frequently posts pictures of herself posing with luxury handbags.
In December 2024, model Janice Joostema had her brand new £10,000 Hermès Birkin bag allegedly stolen from a boutique changing room.
The influencer posted CCTV of what appeared to show her designer handbag being snatched while getting undressed in a VIP changing room at Manière De Voir on Oxford Street, central London.
The influencer – who described herself a ‘Birkin mommy’ to her 1.3million Instagram followers – lost her red Hermes JPG Shoulder Birkin, which is valued at more than £10,000.
Ms Joostema told MailOnline she had reported the incident immediately afterwards to the police. She also advised followers not to carry expensive items around London.
The influencer issued a stark warning to Londoners as she shared the shocking footage.
She wrote: ‘Londoners beware. Thieves are coming into dressing rooms when they see you turned, they are watching you while you are changing and naked just to steal your belongings.
‘My brand new Hermes shoulder Birkin I had less than a week was stolen while I was turned around in this room changing into a top, I was facing away from the door as the room is all windows.
‘She poked her head in twice, I was naïve and thought maybe she was innocently looking for the bathroom or something.’
Ms Joostema said she was ‘unharmed’ but that her passport was stolen at ‘the hands of this selfish individual’. She was forced to cancel her holiday to Switzerland.
The model added: ‘To work so hard for something and it be taken like this, is gut wrenching, for someone to purchase such items is a big deal, it’s not something small, and I don’t want to be materialistic but it’s the human morals and principle of the value of money and that cuts deep for someone who’s always dreamt of having an Hermès bag and it being taken like this.
‘I believe everything happens for a reason but it’s really sad to know people exist in the world committing such acts of crime against other humans.’
A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said at the time: ‘On Tuesday, 17 December, following circulation of a video of the incident, officers contacted the victim of a theft that happened inside a shop in Oxford Street. No arrests have been made at this stage. This matter is under investigation.’
The incident came just two weeks after two masked robbers broke into a designer showroom and walked out with ‘thousands of pounds’ worth of luxury handbags during what the owner believes was a ‘targeted’ four-minute heist.
Evey Amery, a luxury consignment seller, was left feeling ‘sick’ and ‘horrified’ after discovering her north London showroom had been stripped of expensive pre-loved Chanel, Hermes and Dior bags in an ‘aggressive’ late night raid on December 3.
Her robbery came just three weeks after three men stole £500,000 worth of luxury stock from a handbag shop called Sellier in Belgravia. Police were not treating the robberies as linked.
The Birkin was created in 1984 when, on a flight from Paris to London, the British actress Jane Birkin sat next to Jean-Louis Dumas, the then-executive chairman of the French fashion house Hermès, and complained she could not find a bag for her needs as a fashionable young mother.
Dumas sketched a design for a spacious rectangular leather tote – and the Birkin was born.
Depending on the size, colour and material the tote is made from, prices for an entry-level Birkin start at £8,000 today but can rise to tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds. The most expensive Hermes Birkin bag sold for £1.5 million ($2 million).
The high price tag of the bag is said to be due to its artisan nature, with each one taking 18 hours to craft. Exclusive clientele also receive a tag with the year the bag was made on it, as well as the name of its designer.
Some say the Birkin bag is a ‘better investment than gold’ or ‘like buying a Picasso’ as their price dramatically grows over time due to high demand.
Unlike many of its competitors, Hermès doesn’t gift its bags or pay ambassadors and influencers to endorse them, either.
‘We have celebrities who buy our bags, but we’ve never had a celebrity [ambassador], because everybody is seen as a client,’ Hermes CEO, Axel Dumas — a sixth-generation member of the Hermes family — told The Telegraph in 2017: ‘Everybody’s welcome, no one is judged.’
Although everyone is welcome in theory, there are a few steps to buying one of the most sought-after bags in the world.
Auction house expert Max Brownawell previously explained: ‘Your average woman can’t just walk into Hermes and buy one. You’d have to have a long-standing relationship with one of their sales associates.’
But once a customer secures a rare Birkin, how do they keep it safe? Security expert Michael said: ‘Keep the bag with you, or put it looped around a leg of the table. I would even put it in my lap.
‘It’s got to be with you, and you should always double it around your arm instead of one,’ he said, while added: ‘Don’t tell people you’ve got these things, because it’s very easy to find out where you are.’
MailOnline has contacted Hermès for comment.
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