Bringing Home the Birkin

by Michael Tonello

  The Ingénue

  GENDER: female

  SEXUAL PREFERENCE: whoever’s paying

  AGE: 20–25

  HAIR: shiny

  TEETH: perfect and framed by Botox-enhanced lips

  MOTTO: “Let me ask”

  PERCENTAGE IN HERMÈS CAPTIVITY: 15–20%

  •LIKELIHOOD OF BIRKIN PURCHASE: what’s a Birkin?

  PREVIOUS JOB: kegger

  THE LOWDOWN: this employee, although willing, is anything but ready-and-able. Apparently hired yesterday and has yet to go through any sort of formal training. Quick to get help from either the Incurable Romantic, Farmer, Nazi, or Grandmother…just hope that it’s not the Farmer you end up with!

  APPROACH: immediately ask if the Grandmother is working today.

  I got an e-mail back late the next afternoon, right before I got on the plane for home.

  From: “Pime”

  To: “Michael”

  Michael-

  I laugh so hard I cry…I had to try again for bag, you are so funny and nice to try and cheer me up…so I went again in, and guess what? I got a grandmother this time, and a Birkin. Tell me where to send, and all. Pime

  I couldn’t help feeling proud of myself for this one. After my Birkin 101 course, Pime was ready for anything Hermès could throw at her. Well, except maybe a Farmer/Nazi with a croc and a RESERVED sign…that could spell doom for anyone.

  24

  A Yen for Hermès

  Four or five months of madness whipped by—lots of tea drinking and eBay auction gawking and passport stamps and hotel directions lying in the passenger seat of my rental car. I had gone through all the bags from the Germany trip, naturally. I had also made another round of the south of France, looped Spain and Portugal a few times, dropped in at Serge at the Faubourg, and had the odd bag rolling in from Dominique (my Deauville connection), Pime, and Luc. I had fifty or more auctions running on eBay at all times, on the items that “financed” the Birkin purchases. I closed on half of them each weekend, and Monday was now shipping day. I scanned/responded to/refreshed my e-mail inbox a lot. I cherished the friendly, obscenity-laden updates from Sarah and Hermès hotline posts from Grace, which arrived nestled amid the monotonous stream of customer queries.

  I read a lot of e-mails. I wrote a lot of e-mails. More e-mails than I personally believe a person should read or write. Especially if that person is me. Rather than seeing my BlackBerry as a shiny toy, I now viewed it as an electronic ankle bracelet for Hermès stores in Europe—I had to constantly be around one or risk a chance of missing a croc Birkin for some wealthy woman who really wanted one. I had lovely clients—and clients the sight of whose return e-mail address I winced at. I progressed to form e-mail, making e-mail templates that answered the top ten repeat-offender questions. I stopped short of making FAQ to mail out; there was too much chance of a homophobic typo appearing in the subject line of a customer’s angry reply. Not that they were angry often, but I did deal with the public, albeit chiefly through cyber-means. And I was in the service industry—it has its moments, as any waiter can tell you. I bought Birkins. I sold Birkins. I worked on specializing in the croc bags, and it was coming along nicely. Business as usual.

  I could tell it was taking its toll on my home life, as well as on me. I wanted to enjoy the money I was making, not just spend it on hotels in cities I barely even got to see when I was there. And while Juan didn’t begrudge me my nomadic life, he didn’t adore being my Hermès golf widow. Plus, Christmas was fast approaching, along with Juan’s three-week break from teaching. It was obvious: we needed a vacation. We had to make up our minds where, although I was willing to bend to whatever Juan wanted, since I was always traveling. What was funny was that whenever we discussed going somewhere I knew there was an Hermès store, I couldn’t help calculating how much of the trip’s cost could be defrayed if I got one good croc bag. It didn’t really matter much in the choosing process, though—a vast majority of the world’s most desirable locations have an Hermès store. Unless we settled on Calcutta for our romantic getaway, I could at least do a croc drive-by regardless of where we went. Fortunately, we went with two major cities neither of us had been to—a quick weekend in Moscow and then Tokyo for ten days.

  I spent the first morning in Moscow sightseeing with Juan, taken off guard by both the bitter cold and the haphazard class distinctions among the people. After living in a Spanish city where both the thermometer and the socioeconomic ladder lacked such extremes, my system definitely felt the shock. Christian Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, Cartier, and Louis Vuitton all had multiple store locations, but parked on the same street were fifty-year-old cars rotting from rust. And the landscape was dominated by gray—gray skies, gray streets, gray faces. It’s not that I didn’t think it was beautiful…I did. Red Square, the Kremlin, St. Basil’s Cathedral—how could you feel anything but awe when you looked at the onion domes? Plus, Juan and I had a gorgeous room at the Park Hyatt, a luxury hotel in a central location. It was really that Moscow fell squarely into the same category as Vegas—great place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.

  Hermès was no issue, at least. It was relatively easy for me to get a leather Birkin from the youngish “grandmother” working there, although there was a panicky moment when I found out that they didn’t take American Express. I ran to an ATM to fetch some rubles, and the crisis was averted. (Side note: My banker in Barcelona had been very understanding a few months prior to this, when I had mentioned the issues that having a “maximum withdraw” limit on my ATM card could cause for me. As a result of her kindness, I now had twelve ATM cards. You do not want to be in line behind me when I have to get Birkin money—it’s not pretty.) So, the Park Hyatt now paid for by Hermès clients, it was time to head for the exotic Orient.

  Tokyo was a complete mind-fuck, even for a seasoned traveler like myself. First off, Juan and I had booked at Hotel Okura, and it blew us away. Our suite had a commanding view of both a traditional Japanese garden and the skyscrapers that crowded every inch of the city’s horizon. However, I think Juan and I were more entranced by the little remote control next to our bed, which ran everything. All the lighting in the suite, the television, the drapes, the electronic do-not-disturb message—you could deal with all of it while in a reclining position. Apparently this was nothing special for Japan, but to us it was technology on a Jetsons level. Possibly even cooler was this silent printer/fax we didn’t even really notice until we called the concierge to request that he make our dinner reservations. Five minutes later, a piece of paper spouted out of the aforementioned machine with the confirmation of our plans, the restaurant info, and the directions for the cabbie printed out in Japanese. Very spiffy.

  The day after we arrived was Christmas Eve, and we were unexpectedly given a fantastic present. My mother had called ahead and made us reservations at La Belle Époque, selecting it out of the nine restaurants in the hotel. She also made arrangements that she would take care of the bill. There were only a few entrées to choose from, as it was a prix fixe menu for the holiday. We settled on Kobe beef—a tenderloin dusted with truffles, wrapped in pastry, and finished with a truffle demi-glace. The waiter actually rolled out a cart bearing the entire tenderloin, accompanied by the chef, who then carved pieces from it in front of us. Since there were no prices listed, Juan and I had no idea of the cost of our meal until my mom told me two months later that a $1,000 charge from Tokyo had appeared on her Visa bill. She hadn’t realized what she had gotten herself into either—whoops. (Good thing she and my dad had inherited a sizable amount of money, which meant she was laughing, not crying, as she told me what had happened.) But anyway, that night, blissfully ignorant, we ate Kobe beef until the chef’s arm must have been ready to fall off. Hey, at least they hadn’t been charging by the pound…then we really would have been in trouble.

  The Hermès in Tokyo makes the Faubourg look like a mall kiosk. Renzo Piano designed the twelve-story
building, which is constructed completely of glass boxes about a foot square. Now, that sounds very cool, but it doesn’t sound close to as cool as it actually is in person, seeing this mammoth translucent building glowing with an ethereal white light. What was funny was that it is often described as architecturally understated, which I guess it could be mistaken for if compared with the other consumer temples of the Ginza shopping district. Chanel, for example, had the front of its building made as a gigantic LED board, upon which they change the “fabric,” making the entire façade shift between plaid, polka dots, paisley, or whatever else they can dream up. The Dior building has two layers to its exterior walls, the smallish holes punched in the steel of the outer layer allowing the light of the fiber optics housed beneath to peek through. (Think really, really big Lite-Brite.) The Sony building right next door to Hermès has a brightly colored mural stretching eight stories, plus the added bonus of free PlayStation on the sixth floor. Shiseido cosmetics made its building look like one of its trademark maroon glass bottles, either that or a light stick for the world’s largest raver. But, as visually appealing as they all were, none of them sold my merchandise, so I started my day at the Hermès store. However, I didn’t end up getting “the usual” that day. The pricing in the Tokyo location, including that of the Birkins (amazingly enough, they actually keep them out where you can see them), was prohibitive to really aggressive formula enactment. So I went with a black crocodile Kelly bag that was prominently displayed in the store, and then sent Juan in to get “his Kelly” in brown. That worked. I could bear to sacrifice some Birkins, as long as there was a little bit of crocodile skin coming home with me.

  Juan and I did the typical tourist stuff: the Kabuki theater, the Imperial Palace, and, most memorably, a two-day sojourn near Hakone National Park. We went there to enjoy the onsen, the hot restorative springs that have made the region famous. Our senshin-tei, or traditional Japanese room, was a hanare—a completely separate building where we were attended to by a personal geisha of sorts…no makeup or any funny stuff, of course. She did make us our meals of sushi, prepare our beds, provide us with traditional dress, and, most important, bring us copious amounts of sake. Our lodging was complete with its own private rotenburo, a natural hot-spring Jacuzzi tucked in a bamboo hut. The 108-degree water was piped directly in from a natural hot spring, and never recycled. This spring was one of the many near Mount Fuji, whose looming presence was mirrored in the nearby Lake Ashi. Overall, I felt enchanted, like Ralph Macchio in the second Karate Kid movie (minus the peach fuzz and the guy who wanted to fight me). Juan was so relaxed by our days in the spa that he never even mentioned the price, which normally would have caused him to faint and drown in the waters of the onsen. In other words, our stay was a rousing success.

  We rounded out our culinary adventures on our vacation in Tokyo with one more notable meal. On New Year’s Eve we ate at the Park Hyatt building, in a place called the New York Grill. The restaurant was on the fifty-second floor, reached after a ride up to the fifty-first and a short walk through a massive library on whose shelves intermingled books and objets d’art. The view was obviously surreal, as was the theme for the night: fire and ice. When we sat down, we were each presented with an ice block a foot square (like a temporary brick of that Hermès store) with two tubes protruding from it—one filled with caviar, one with Champagne. Ice. All night, there were copious flambé dishes and flamenco dancers wielding flaming batons. Fire. The meal needed no theming, as it was pretty much anything you wanted, from lobster to more of that Kobe beef we had gorged on a week earlier. Between Surf & Turf and Fire & Ice, Juan & I were deliciously Dazed & Confused by our environment (and the two bottles of Champagne we drank). We were there till well after the new year had rolled in, relishing the bizarre opulence of the place.

  Oddly enough, we got to revisit our evening unexpectedly a year or so hence, when we rented Lost in Translation, set almost in its entirety at the Park Hyatt. All the “bar scenes” from that excellent movie were filmed in the bar attached to the New York Grill. I always thought it was a shame that it hadn’t been Fire & Ice night in one of the scenes set there—it would have added a whole new level to the Bill Murray character’s cultural confusion.

  I also found out some valuable information about “my” company while I was on vacation in Japan. Tokyo had a fetish for the Hermès brand that exceeded anything I had heretofore seen. In addition to the gigantic glass building I had gone to, which was obviously the mack daddy of them all, there were eleven other stores spread throughout the city. Intrigued by this, when I got home, I pulled out my Le Monde d’Hermès and counted the stores in Asia. Roughly a hundred Hermès stores made their home in the Orient. Even given the population distribution on the planet, that was a whole lot of people sporting the H logo in one form or another.

  I wasn’t really sure why this was, and when I asked Grace about it in an e-mail, she confirmed that the Asian market was booming, but didn’t really know why either. I knew from my experience in Japan that virtually everyone there loved branded items, and my hypothesis was that Hermès had built the “brand to end all brands.” And it wasn’t an easy brand to afford, which always adds to the cachet. The handbags I had seen in that mammoth solar panel of a store were priced as though they already had a Tonello markup. I mused idly over whether I could justify going back with European-bought handbags and hosting some kind of Hermès purse Tupperware party. The practical concerns overwhelmed me, though, and I decided I had to wait on it. At least until I figured out how to hack into Tokyo’s five-star hotel computers and send my invitations through all their directions printout systems.

  25

  Shop ’Til You Drop

  When we first got back from vacation, I was more relaxed than I had been in a while. Juan and I were definitely solid again too. But after two more months of weeklong bag-buying quests, and trips to correos, and constant BlackBerry messages, it was as if we’d never even taken a vacation (except for the photo on the fridge, of us in front of the Imperial Palace). I started feeling sort of logy, blaming it on “the grind,” and I took another mini-vacation in the early spring. I puttered around the house for two weeks, back in my pajamas, as in those good ol’ scarf days, getting the odd Birkin here and there from my “shoppers.” Two weeks was a long break from airports for me at this point, but as much as I self-medicated with Earl Grey, my fatigue didn’t seem to be going away. I decided I had to pull out of my funk and take another journey. There was no reason for me to feel fatigued after two weeks of nothingness. Presumably, I was just bored.

  I flew to Geneva and was feeling a little energized by the mid-May mountain air. I was always partial to May, since in New England it was the first month it was safe to bet that you weren’t going to get any more snow that winter. It could happen, but the odds were at least stacked in your favor. I was further energized by the Hermès store, which sold me a 30cm fuchsia crocodile Birkin after I dropped about three grand on shawls and scarves.

  Then I rented a car and headed to Lyon. On the highway, I gradually realized I wasn’t feeling all that great. The hour and a half in the driver’s seat dragged by, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I got to my destination. I went into Hermès Lyon and continued my lucky streak—they sold me another 30cm croc bag, this time a matte barenia. That would fetch a pretty penny. However, even with the excitement I felt at this, I felt my exhaustion more. Something was definitely not right; maybe a bug? I also had a pounding headache—unusual for me. Well, my cranial pain system was making up for lost opportunities, because it was a goddamn doozy this time. I wandered weak-kneed back to the hotel, showered, took some aspirin, and lay on my back, staring at the ceiling and wanting to die. I decided I needed to drink some water before I expired, though—my throat was the fucking Sahara. I guzzled two bottles of water and passed out around four in the afternoon. Two things to note here: I don’t drink water, and I don’t pass out in the afternoon. So I was sick. Away from home, and sick. To quote so
meone or other: “To those who understand, no explanation is necessary, to those who don’t, none is possible.” In short, my situation was misery on a stick. I was awakened a couple of hours later by my cell phone ringing, a sound that was so painful to me that I considered jamming a hotel pen in my eye, ending my misery. I answered the phone instead. Juan. Somehow he convinced me to try to go eat something, and I was too weak to form a coherent argument.

  Mission failure. I had choked down one or two bites of dinner and then motioned for the check. The waiter seemed relieved; I think he was sick of refilling my water glass. I staggered back to the hotel (the front desk clerk likely thought I was wasted) and fell back into bed. Chugged more water, used it to wash down three more aspirin, and passed out.

  I awoke the next day still exhausted. I was in a true dilemma—should I stay here until I felt well enough to travel, or suffer through a daylong journey and sleep in my own bed tonight? My itinerary wasn’t an easy one—I had to drive four hours to Perpignan to return the car, and then take a train home. Basically, for someone in my current condition, those two tasks were on a par with running the Iditarod. But my homebody tendencies carried the day—I could bear anything if it meant I could go be sick in the privacy of my own apartment.

  The drive from Lyon to the train station took far more than four hours, since I stopped multiple times to get water and Gatorade at gas stations. Then I had to park in Zimbabwe (well, nearly) and drag the two Birkins and my suitcase into the station to hand the car keys to the Hertz guy. Even the weather was conspiring against me, although the fever I suspected I was now running was likely adding to my paranoia. Either way, it was an unseasonable eighty degrees, and that wasn’t helping matters. But there was nothing to be done—I got in line behind a dozen or so people (thanks again, cruel universe, for the lengthy line) to buy my train ticket. Almost done. I stood there, shifting my weight between my feet, so miserable and hot and headachy and fatigued I could barely stand. And just like that, I wasn’t standing anymore. Nor was I conscious.