All about the ‘world’s most expensive’ Himalayan Birkin bag

Crafted from Nile crocodile hide and custom-colored to achieve its distinctive gradation, the Hermès Himalaya Birkin is the holy grail for any handbag collector — but scoring one might be tougher than summiting Mount Everest.

“The reason this bag is so valuable is because it’s completely hand-dyed,” Daniel Englander, an expert on luxury resale site Fashionphile‘s VIP Relations team, tells Page Six Style of the “ultra-rare” purse owned by celebrities like Jennifer Lopez, Kim Kardashian and Victoria Beckham.

“The way that they’re dyed mimics the snow-capped mountains of the Himalayas, and it’s all hand-done … which means you’re never going to see one that has the exact dye pattern of another.”

While these one-of-a-kind Birkins would likely be priced between $50,000 and $80,000 in Hermès stores, according to Englander, only the house’s most important clients are offered the “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity to purchase them.

Select celebrities might also be given the chance to place an order for one of the “very, very limited number” of Himalaya Birkins produced per year by the house.

“It’s free publicity [for Hermès] for this to be on the arm of someone who’s going to be photographed all over the world, so that definitely does help their chances of not only getting offered a Birkin, but more rare versions of Birkins,” Englander says.

Everyone else’s best bet is to go the resale route, which requires coughing up an additional six figures.

“The resale [price] can be anywhere from $100,000 to $500,000 — especially if the item has diamonds on the hardware,” the bag expert explains.

Indeed, the embellished version of the Himalaya Birkin is known for being the most expensive handbag ever sold at auction; in 2022, one fetched a staggering $450,000 at Sotheby’s.

And Englander tells us that when it comes to resale value, size matters — though not in the way you might think.

“The smaller the bag, the higher the resale,” he shares, pointing to the petite Himalaya Birkin 25 carried by Lopez and Kardashian as the “most desirable and sought-after size.”

“While we don’t have an exact number of how many Himalayas there are on the market, we do know that the 30 is the most common size,” he adds of the larger version of the prized purse, one of which Fashionphile’s currently offering for $159,500. (A bargain!)

Ultimately, no matter how high a Himalaya Birkin’s price tag soars, it likely won’t stop an avid collector with cash to burn.

After all, as Englander puts it: “It really is, at the end of the day, a status symbol.”