---
title: "Hermès Birkin 35 (Black Box)"
date: 2021-09-15T16:42:29-04:00
categories: [bags, hermes]
tags: [birkin, black]
draft: false
---

![Hermès Birkin 30 in Box Calfskin [Black]](/images/hermesbirkin35blackboxstock.jpg)

These bags are so desirable that if you manage to purchase one from an Hermès 
boutique, you could easily walk out of the store and sell it to someone else 
for a great deal more than you paid for it at the retailer. Because they're 
so valuable outside of their own retail environment and move so quickly, the 
brand's sales associates (SAs) refuse to sell the bags to anyone other than 
"dedicated" Hermès brand fanatics and loyalists. A good measure that seems to 
sway most SAs into offering one of these coveted bags for sale is to spend at 
least the (retail) value of the bag on other items sold by Hermès--the 
housewares, the blankets, the clothes, the belts, the footwear, the silk 
scarves and the perfumes. Of course, none of this matters if you happen to be 
someone willing to buy them second-hand.

Box leather is named after late-19th century English shoe craftsman Joseph 
Box. It was originally formulated for making black shoes that develop a 
gorgeous patina with wear, and was used almost exclusively on vintage Hermès 
bags, like the Kelly. Creases made in the material are very difficult to get 
out, so the fact that their craftsmen who construct the bags can 
saddle-stitch them together by hand without leaving any marks is 
exceptionally impressive. It's almost a tragedy that these are constructed to 
such a high standard only to inevitably see those marks of wear: the 
scratches that can't be buffed out, the creases that almost resemble veins. 
But maybe the fact that the only marks I see on the bag could have come from 
myself, and not where I got it from, is a part of the beauty.
