Birkin on the Brain

The Hermès Birkin bag isn’t just a handbag. It’s a symbol, a subject, and increasingly—for me—an object of study.

I keep coming back to it in my work. Not because I idolize it, but because it’s so culturally overcharged. It’s prestige disguised as restraint. Scarcity wrapped in craftsmanship. The kind of object that carries meaning far beyond its material—until you’re not even looking at the bag anymore, you’re looking at what the bag represents.

I’ve turned it into a head, a body, an identity. Sometimes it’s sculptural. Sometimes it’s absurd. But always, it’s about what we’re projecting onto it: power, perfection, desirability, control. The Birkin is a vessel. A literal one, sure—but more importantly, a psychological one.

That’s why it works so well in art. It’s not just a luxury object. It’s a container for narrative. A status icon with built-in irony. It asks to be questioned, recontextualized, played with—because as serious as it is in fashion, it becomes something else entirely in a gallery space. It becomes commentary.

Hermès knows this, of course. They’ve built an empire on elegance and omission. No campaigns. No sales. Just scarcity, elevated to art form. Their business model runs on discipline and demand management, not hype. And now, they’re reportedly worth more than LVMH.

There’s something brilliant—and slightly dystopian—about that. A brand built on the idea that not everyone gets to have one. The bag itself hasn’t changed in decades. But its meaning keeps evolving, because we keep evolving around it.

That’s why I use it. Not to glorify it, but to extract it. To pull the symbolism into view. Because I’m not interested in the bag—I’m interested in what the bag lets us reveal about ourselves.