Hermès handbags were locked in safes at dawn.
Janice Joostema, the influencer who boasts 1.2m followers on Instagram and had her Birkin handbag stolen in the VIP changing rooms of a shop on Oxford Street on Tuesday, was lucky.
The thief, who was caught on CCTV making off with the “Rouge” shade Hermès Birkin 25 handbag worth upwards of £10,000, did not get physical. Joostema didn’t have her arm yanked out of its socket in Manière De Voir, the “sleek urban” UK-based store, where she was targeted. She didn’t have her coat stolen at knife point, nor her Rolex wrenched off her wrist by a man on a souped-up e-bike.
But the “gut-wrenching” moment, as Joostema has described it, has sent shock waves around the Hermès-bag-wearers of the capital. “Londoners beware,” she broadcast to followers. “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.”
Federica Labanca, an influencer who has a number of Hermès bags, tells The Standard: “I think Janice’s case was very extreme and shocking, but I’m really, really careful. You’d have to be crazy to flash a Birkin carelessly in town now — 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,” she continues. “I’m already very careful with what I wear to go to town, but now I will be even more so.”
Bryan Yambao, known as @bryanboy to his 888K Instagram and 4.3m TikTok followers, is a keen collector of Hermès bags. He says: “Whether it’s bags, watches or mobile phones, it’s down to policing — it’s really sad that the police do not take these crimes seriously to the point that it’s become so commonplace and thieves are brazen more than ever.”
The one-time judge on America’s Next Top Model contines: “Going out of the door in a big, unsafe city such as London or Paris has its risks. There’s not much we can do as the general public other than take safer precautions — the streets are no longer safe!”
It is no surprise that a Birkin, the sought-after handbag model from Hermès, have found themselves at the top of thieves’ most wanted list. After all, they start at around £6,000 and have previously made upwards of $300,000 at auction. Their exclusivity is part of the lore; you cannot walk into the Sloane Street store with a loaded debit card and simply buy one. Customers have to build up a loyalty in store, before waiting for their desired style to be made, and become available.
It’s for this reason their resale value soars. Sellier, one luxury resale site, said research this year showed “Store Fresh Hermès Birkin 25” bags “are the ultimate prize due to most styles doubling in value once they leave the shop. Smaller Birkins have also surged in popularity.” Fortune published an article in March with the headline: “Birkin bags can double in value in 5 years. An Hermès expert explains why it’s a better investment than gold.”
“Birkins are definitely popular items on our site and we have the chance to work with some big Hermes collectors globally so we can source whatever might not be online yet,” says Coco Baraer Panazza, CEO of resale and rental platform MyWardrobeHQ. “They tend to be a resell favourite over rental as a beautiful investment piece, of course we still facilitate rentals for them but tend to find this is a ‘try before you buy.’” The site has a number of Birkins currently for sale, starting at around £22,000.
Why are the bags so expensive in the first place? In a ‘60 Minutes’ interview released this week, Hermès’ artistic director and sixth-generation descendant Pierre-Alexis Dumas says they are not, in fact, expensive, rather they are “costly”. That is because “the cost is the actual price of making an object properly with the required level of attention so that you have an object of quality. Expensive is a product which is not delivering what it’s supposed to deliver, but you’ve paid quite a large amount of money for it, and then it betrays you — that’s expensive,” he said.
The bag was first designed in 1984. The story goes that British-French actress Jane Birkin met Jean-Louis Dumas, the then executive chairman of Hermès, on a plane, and complained she could not find a leather bag that suited her lifestyle as a young mother. Dumas said he would make her one, and Birkin was said to have sketched the initial design on a sickbag.
From sickbag to safe keeping, for now.
