Miranda Blacky / 17 July 2025 / Categories: Product and Brands, Branded Products, Accessories, Opinions

Hermes Picotin Lock Bag may not always impress

Funny story about the sought after bucket bag from Hermes

Like many women I like to carry a smart handbag. I have a few, not loads, but the 4 or 5 I have I love and use regularly. My two best bags are a medium classic flap in black gold hardware 1990 now considered vintage and an even older Hermes Birkin bag as heavily used and beat up as the Jane Birkin bag recently auctioned that went for €8.6 million ($10 million) that it was published in the press Lauren Sanchez Bezo, new wife of billionaire Jeff Bezo tried to purchase but failed. I couldn’t afford my Birkin bag even in the state it’s in now and it tickles me when I use it and people around me pick it up from the floor and put it on a chair in the beauty salon or at a restaurant. I’ve had it so long I just don’t really see it like the precious aspiration wealth statement the Birkin bag has become. Not that I’d ever sell it, the clasp is actually broken from hard wear something I am sure would detract from its resale value, I am not Jane Birkin after all.

I want to tell you a story about perception that may or may not change your view on the Hermes bag in general and what carrying one might say about you are not. I was out with my god daughter the other day and when we parked our car in Brompton Cross village, prestigious area of London, close to the famed Knightsbridge, we had to circle a couple of times to get a space and managed to park just behind a space for a disabled vehicle close to Daphne’s restaurant where we planned to lunch.

Just as we were parking another expensive low slung salon car pulled into the disabled space and we were questioning why a blue badge holder would be driving such a high value vehicle. Not that a disabled vehicle owner couldn’t drive such a high value luxury vehicle, but I did question would that be a priority or affordable, we have a wheelchair user in our family and a super expensive car would be the last thing to buy with so many other things he needs to survive day to day. So I was curious to see the driver and if they or their passenger needed assistance. Not my god daughter she determined immediately it was someone so rich they didn’t care about the £100 parking penalty, the PCN notice levied if they got caught. When the driver and her passenger disembarked, the driver and the passenger didn’t appear to be limited in anyway, neither needing assistance. We couldn’t see any blue badge displayed and I thought about how selfish it was for able bodied people to take the disabled space should some else need it. My god daughter expressed casually rich people she knew did it all the time in London preferring to pay the ticket for the convenience should one be issued. She wasn’t as perplexed as I was. It was normal to her, common place. I thought about us circling, sticking to the rules to find a legal parking space. And questioned if I was the idiot, I certainly now had an opinion (and not a good one) about the women in the expensive car.

We bumped into them again on Walton Street later, they were window shopping, not particularly smartly attired or well groomed and my god daughter pointed out what I thought was a rather boring looked like fake leather bag one of the women was carrying as an Hermes Picotin Lock bag I’d never seen before. To be honest based on the general appearance and grooming of the women I thought the bag which retails for between £3,000 and £25,000 for a rare one, probably came from a lower end department store like Macy’s, absolutely nothing special.

And it got me thinking about the value women place on their handbag to say something about themselves, their social status and standing. Me included. Like I say I have a small collection of designer handbags myself, although I have never even considered paying the fine to park in a disabled spot for convenience when I am not registered disabled and my car does not display the necessary credentials to give me priority.

When I returned home I did a bit more research on the boring handbag we had spotted carried by the women with the expensive car parked in the disabled space and discovered the same bag, a dupe or fake can be picked up on DHgate or Joom.com in leather for anywhere between £35 - £70 depending on the trader you choose.

And I wondered how many kinder more stylish well groomed women could perhaps carry the dupe and convince observers it was the real thing when the reality is people actually notice behaviour, character traits, grace over all, more than flash wheels and expensive trinkets.

I didn’t immediately recognise the expensive bag so it didn’t have the desired effect on me and with the glut of copies, dupes, fakes available who knows it may not have even been as expensive as my God daughter thought.

The irony for me luxury brands like Hermes with the help of it girl icons like Jane Birkin have made us all believe and buy into consumer goods in such a way the market is now flooded with fakes devaluing the goods for the brands anyway and making purchasing secondhand precarious for those of us who cannot really afford to buy new.

And if you do happen to own the real thing and find yourself on hard times needing to sell without the original purchase receipt how do you prove the goods you have are real anyway?

When I purchased my bags it was because I actually loved them and the intention was to keep them for life. Which I have done and I carry them to enjoy and appreciate not worrying about what anyone else thinks except me.

I suppose the moral of the story is if you want to impress on looking people watchers best behave yourself and don’t take a disabled parking space you aren’t entitled to. It won’t matter how much your handbag (or car for that matter) cost.