An Hermès Haut à Courroies owned by Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg: ‘emblematic of a passionate romance’

The origins of Jane Birkin’s namesake handbag are well known: a chance encounter on a flight from Paris to London with Jean-Louis Dumas — the head of Hermès — led to him sketching the ideal holdall for her on the back of an air-sickness bag. Elegant, yet roomy enough for a working mother, a prototype was presented to the actress and singer in 1984, and christened the ‘Birkin’.

In reality, though, that’s only half the story. Two decades earlier, Jane Birkin was a poster child for Swinging London in the 1960s. Her poker-straight hair, gap-toothed smile and heavy lashes helped define the era’s style. So did her trademark wicker baskets, which she would carry on the King’s Road and to nightclubs, awkwardly overflowing with makeup, notes, books, shoes, cigarettes and wine bottles.

In 1968, Birkin met Serge Gainsbourg, the louche singer-songwriter with striking features and an unmistakable voice. The following year, they recorded an album of love songs together, initiating one of the 20th century’s most famous romances. By the middle of the 1970s, as the couple were flitting back and forth between London and Paris, Gainsbourg had purchased a large, black leather bag from Hermès to use as their luggage. Called the Haut à Courroies, or ‘HAC’, it had been introduced in 1892, originally designed to carry riding boots and saddles.

Across the following years, the couple would be photographed countless times with the bag, Gainsbourg usually holding it while Birkin carried her basket. After they separated in 1980, Birkin kept the bag — until 2019, when she auctioned it to raise funds for the humanitarian organisation Médecins du Monde. In a short film to promote the sale, Birkin explained how she continued to use it each Christmas when travelling between England and France with her children. Her gold Eurostar ‘frequent traveller’ luggage label is still attached.

She also confirmed a long-held suspicion: that ‘it was the source of inspiration for my Birkin bag’.

Both bags had been crafted into voluminous trapezoids from panels of buttery-soft black leather. Each one features the now-iconic belt, threaded through a pair of holding fixtures to give the bag the appearance of being tied around the top. They both also have the same signature style of hardware.

Both bags were constructed by hand using a double-needle saddle stitch — a technique that can’t be replicated by machine. For Jane’s prototype Birkin, Dumas simply shrank the HAC design by around 15 centimetres, leaving enough volume for all of her belongings and allowing it to be swung over her shoulder from a pair of elongated handles.

‘Without this little-known HAC, there would be no iconic Birkin bag,’ says Lucile Andreani, head of Handbags and Accessories in Paris. ‘More than that, though, this bag was used and cherished by Serge Gainsbourg, then Jane Birkin, for nearly half a century. There is something almost poetic about it. It’s emblematic of a passionate romance, and one of the most renegade, stylish couples of all time.’

Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg’s Hermès HAC will be on view at Christie's in Paris from 31 October to 4 November 2025, as part of a preview of the sale Handbags Online: The Paris Edit, which takes place between 31 October and 13 November. The Exceptional Handbags & Accessories sale takes place on 6 November at Christie’s in Paris