RichardJohnson@questmag.com WOMEN WHO buy Birkin bags aren’t crazy spendaholics obsessed with status symbols. It turns out Birkin bags are a savvy investment. Judy Taylor, the founder and CEO of Madison Avenue Couture, has been buying and selling the Hermès totes for 15 years. Having just opened a shop off Worth Avenue to go along with its store in midtown Manhattan, Taylor said business is booming. “We are catering to a repeat customer. We know who our customers are,” Taylor told me
over lunch at Swifty’s. Her woman-owned, woman-run business now has 23 employees. Her clientele is “affluent, educated and successful.” The bag was designed after Hermès boss Jean-Louis Dumas sat next to actress Jane Birkin on a flight from Paris to London in 1983. When Birkin’s straw basket fell out of the overhead compartment, and its contents scattered on the floor, she complained she couldn’t find a leather bag she liked. Voila! I was shocked to learn that
Hermès customers who want to buy a new Birkin bag have to wait for months and are "encouraged" into buying other Hermes products as well. “Wherever there’s an Hermès store, we do great because people go into the store and try to buy a bag and can’t get one and come to us,” Taylor said. “We’ve sold several $90,000 bags on our website without a phone call.” Part of the appeal is the marketability. “Birkin bags are very liquid,” Taylor said. “Art is meant to be auctioned. A
Birkin bag is not. We market for them. We take all the friction out of it.” Madison Avenue Couture has over 1,500 bags in stock. But even with that supply, “We don’t have every bag in every color.” The problem neophytes find all too often is counterfeit Birkins. “We work with two of the top authenticators,” Taylor said. “They have never been wrong.” It turns out the Birkin bag is a great investment — perhaps as good as diamonds.
Clockwise from top left: Founder & CEO Judy Taylor; Jane Birkin in Cannes, France, 1974; Melissa Tenorio, Palm Beach Showroom Director; Sales Associate Sophia Sherkanowski assisting
C O U R TE S Y OF M ADI S ON AV E N U E C O U T U RE ; G A M M A - R AP H O V I A G ET T Y I M AG E S
a client at the Palm Beach store.
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