The perfect excuse to demand a designer bag for Christmas!
As these gorgeous handbags are sold at auction for up to 15 TIMES their original price
WOMEN of the world, prepare to swoon! Feast your eyes on some of the 200 most lust- inducing bags in the world — all sold yesterday at the fashion auction of the year.
A word of warning, though. This arm candy might not be quite within your budget, unless you have the equivalent of the price of a house deposit to blow.
That’s because yesterday, there was a sale of rare handbags by British auction house Christie’s in Paris — and most went for record prices, proof that handbags are the hot new investment of the moment.
From the vintage crocodile Hermes bags — all of which fetched tens of thousands, thanks to the fact they’re almost impossible to get hold of — to gorgeous Chanel clutches, there were styles to please quite literally every woman.
The star was a sunny yellow Hermes Kelly bag in Courchevel leather, once owned by Elizabeth Taylor, which drew gasps when it sold for £35,280. The bag, made in 1991, is a model that Hermes stopped producing 15 years ago.
As Christie’s is better known for brokering priceless works of art, you may wonder how bags came to be such valuable currency. How can a much-used bag, even if it’s been well-maintained and doesn’t have too many lipstick and Biro marks on the lining, cost more today than when it was first purchased? And more importantly, is this
the justification that any woman needs every time her other half looks accusingly at her new handbag purchase?
The answer is that rare designer bags have never been so in demand by the super-rich. Earlier this year, a white crocodile- skin Hermes Birkin handbag encrusted with diamonds sold in Hong Kong for a record-breaking £293,000.
Given the instability of the property market and the current global outlook, investors are keen to put their cash somewhere safe.
Bags are the latest asset that won’t drop in value. It has been estimated that some rare bags, including certain Chanel models, can increase in value between 8 and 12 per cent per annum.
These handbags are status symbol and investment rolled into one irresistible package.
Not just any handbag maker will do, though, when it comes to getting back more at the point of reselling than you originally paid.
While ‘It’ bags from the likes of Gucci, Mulberry, Fendi and Yves Saint Laurent could set you back a couple of thousand pounds, these aren’t (currently) the names that will have great resale value.
For the canny collector, there’s only a tiny coterie of haute handbag makers worth forking out for if profit is your ultimate aim. But reselling is always a gamble, as even some of these bags lost money on our estimated original values.
At the top of the tree sits Hermes, of which plenty were sold last night. Hermes bags are sought after for the rarity of discontinued models, and the difficulty even of getting hold of brand-new ones.
Despite the fact that the cheapest new Birkin bag cost more than £6,000, there’s always a waiting list. And Hermes refuses to reveal how many bags it produces a year. The less available its bags are, the more people want them — and so the price goes up.
If Hermes leads the race, Chanel is snapping at its heels. There were around 20 Chanel bags on offer in the auction (compared to Hermes’s 150-plus), but their resale value is growing almost as fast as Hermes.
If you felt like a gamble, you might have put in a bid for Chanel’s Lucite ‘Casino’ bag, shaped like a die and seen on the 2016 runway — it sold for £7,715. The whimsical Plexiglas Russian doll, studded with pearls, went for £16,530.
Then there are the novelty bags, which, if it weren’t for the price, might be regarded as cute stocking fillers. Most of these 40 fanciful clutches are designed by Holocaust survivor Judith Leiber (now 96), who has been making bejewelled bags for the likes of Greta Garbo and Jennifer Lopez since 1963.
The remainder are the work of Kathrine Baumann, a former actress known as the ‘Beverly Hills Bag Lady’, who is a kind of Andy Warhol of purses, creating crystal pop-art bags modelled on American symbols such as Coke bottles and Campbell’s Soup tins. They’re yours for up to £2,500 a pop.
Of course, not all It bags are equal. The notion of marketing handbags as the ultimate status symbol only really kicked off in the Nineties as both female consumers and large fashion corporations became more acquisitive.
Working women climbing the career ladder had greater spending power, while small, luxury- end businesses were being snapped up by the hungry conglomerates who came to realise that accessories, rather than clothing, could generate the best profits.
From the late Nineties, every fashion house tried to produce its own It bag, from Louis Vuitton’s Graffiti bag (2000), to the Chloe Paddington ( 2004), and the Mulberry ‘Alexa’ (2009) inspired by kooky fashion icon Alexa Chung — so many were produced that these are now almost worthless.
Whether the It bags of the Nineties, Noughties and now will gain in value in the future has yet to be seen.
So if you do want an investment bag now, where do you go? Some are putting their money on Stalvey. It’s a new kid on the block, launched in 2014, and the brainchild of Jason Stalvey, who has a background in business and neuroscience (presumably he’s figured out the urge-to- splurge gene) and embeds gold into the skins he uses.
You can buy his Aliza clutch at Harrods for £20,500. According to Matthew Rubinger, Christie’s international head of handbags and accessories, Stalvey is a ‘ will be’ brand.
For the super-rich, it’s a difficult choice. Put in a bid for a Birkin today, or take a punt on a Stalvey instead and hope the market will move in its favour in the future?
My advice: it’s only Christmas once a year, so why not go for broke and splash out on both?
Here, handbag specialist and TV expert Claudia Valentin estimates their original cost of the bags. We compare that to the price realised at auction, which includes the sold price and a buyer’s premium . . .