Dressed in a white lab coat, Mélissa B. slips on thin cotton gloves and gently places a Zanzibar blue Hermès Birkin bag, its iconic orange box, a cloth dust cover, and various documents on her desk. She steps back to eye the $18,000 purse, hunting for any bulges or bends. She runs her fingertips along the top, then picking up her pocket-size magnifying glass, she leans in to examine a palladium plate on the flap. The logo has evolved over time, but the engraved text has remained sharp and well-defined, with the characters evenly spaced. “This is one of the key Birkin features to check,” she says.
She shifts her gaze to the stitching, checking for consistency and uniformity. The four palladium feet on the bottom of the bag get a check to ensure they’re made of the same metal as the rest of the hardware, and that they’re hammered, not screwed, in place. Then she homes in on the zipper—ensuring it’s one made by Hermès in-house, with its distinctive H-shaped stopper at the end.
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