Padel may be all the rage and Squid Games season 2 may have had a record-breaking debut, but there is no sport that has captured the minds of luxury connoisseurs quite like the game of snagging an Hermès Birkin. There’s even a Reddit thread dedicated to ‘The Hermès Game’ (because does anything truly arrive until it’s on Reddit?). The French maison, founded in 1837 has long held the mantle for making some of the world’s most covetable bags. But the holy trinity of their ‘quota bags’, namely the Birkin, the Kelly, and the Constance, which retail for lakhs of rupees, cannot just be bought by casually sauntering into your nearest store with a generous credit card limit. These bags, as it turns out, must be ‘offered’ to you. And yes, apparently there is a waiting list to even get on the waiting list.
“…You have to be patient,” confirmed Pierre-Alexis Dumas, the brand’s artistic director, about securing one of these scarce (and sacred, for many) bags in a recent interview. “…it's a long process. You go to a store. You get an appointment. You meet a salesperson. You talk about what you want. If it’s not available, you’ll have to wait. They’ll come back to you. It takes a long time. Eventually, it’s gonna happen.”
Manifesting this eventuality has consumed countless suitors. The game plans, time, and resources they are willing to deploy in the pursuit of these handbags (or is it happiness?) are stuff of retail legend—everything from scouring resellers and auctions, hiring personal shoppers, or dropping lakhs on ‘pre-spends’ (‘Birkin bait’, as the seasoned pros think of it) to build their customer profiles, and on the rare occasion, even suing the brand on failing to secure said goods.
If all this Hermès speak is Latin to you, there are even tutorials on social media full of purported cheat codes to help you win the ultimate prize. While parody Instagram accounts (@husbandsathermes, we are looking at you) aren’t exactly new, and unboxing videos are a dime a dozen, this is a very particular category of Hermès-specific content. Cue: instructional, educational, and insider intel by avid collectors of the brand that’s targeted towards those still on this handbag quest. The topics they cover can vary from the best countries to shop in, how to build a relationship with the Birkin-gatekeeper aka your SA (sales associate), getting a leather appointment in Paris, buying a bag without the pre-spend, and scoring multiple ‘quota bags’ within a year.
It’s a universe dominated by an insatiable hunger to sit at this table. “Hermès is a cultural phenomenon today. There are so many aspirational clients, and only a few who get to realise the experience of actually owning a bag. So, there is a humongous, almost vicarious, appetite to know more. Since the brand is typically so tight-lipped, even basic nuances are foreign concepts to a large population,” explains Chicago-based Monika Arora, who runs PurseBop, a website that has been publishing handbag news and insights, with a special focus on Hermès, for the last 13 years.
“And there’s definitely more interest coming in from India, which has become one of the top five countries consuming our content,” she reveals. This comes as no surprise considering the sheer number of celebrities routinely spotted with their own Hermès arm candy. The Ambani wedding last year was a parade of Kellys, and celebrities like Ananya Panday and Isha Ambani are bejewelling theirs with diamond-encrusted charms.
Many who are serious about their attempts to outplay Hermès at its own game, have also discovered Tania Antonenkova, a Dallas-based digital creator and tech sales entrepreneur, who, for a cool 3,000 bucks (dollars obviously, not rupees. What did you think this is? A crash course on buying a Wirkin from Walmart?) offers entry to her ‘H Inner Circle’: a members-only community with monthly Q&As, interactive chats, as well as a recording of a course called ‘International Hermès Success Path’. For an additional $2,000, you also get one-on-one calls with Antonenkova for tailored advice, and access to her via private messages.
But what exactly qualifies Antonenkova for this? The creator tells us that she started her “Hermès journey,” in 2020. In just three short years she added more than 10 bags to her collection including three Birkins and four Mini Kellys, all purchased directly from the brand’s various stores, as opposed to resellers. “I did not buy any bags in 2024. My collection is complete with Hermès basics. I’m now waiting for more special pieces—a Kelly Picnic, and a commissioned exotic skin Kelly.”
When Antonenkova started posting her success stories on Instagram, curiosity and questions started pouring in. So much so, that she had to hire a team to help answer her DMs. And then she thought, why not put key information in one place for a fee? “Plus, it’s not like I can come out and reveal all the tips and tricks publicly, right? If everyone knows the strategies, it would become much harder for buyers like me.”
So first came the ‘roadmaps’ that are guides to Hermès stores and their corresponding experiences for all the outlets in the US, Paris, and South of France. “I’ve been to all personally, except for one shop,” she says of the downloadable PDFs that come for $49 a pop, with an additional guide on ‘10 mistakes to avoid burning bridges with Hermès’ for another $27. The ‘H Inner Circle’ membership though, is her main sell, which she says has found takers from South-East Asia, the Middle East, the US and Europe, and is, “more like a social club and safe space now. I might not reopen memberships again,” she adds.
Still, isn’t that a pretty penny to drop just to learn how to secure the bag, with no guarantees of success? “Many people with serious interest in the bags are ready to pay for a shortcut. So that they don’t end up spending a lot more to figure it out themselves,” says Antonenkova. “I remember my first time in Paris, it took me a solid 10 days to understand the process. I wish I could have paid someone to tell me how it works, and save my time,” she recalls.
Deeper down this rabbit hole there are others who have almost become professionals at scoring these status-defining bags—like French Riviera native and Hermès collector of 30 years Marianne Octobon of @OrangeDaily who also has a brand of luxury bag inserts and can even authenticate your pre-loved Hermès bags by just looking at a picture (and no, she has no intentions of charging a fee for this). “I’ve been in this game long before the age of smartphones and video calls. I have a huge experience, and this comes naturally to me.” It helps that Octobon studied haute couture in Paris, and had brief stints working at Chanel and Givenchy in the ’80s. There’s also Shiran Melamed aka @styledbyshishi who seems to be collecting an Hermès a year for her newborn daughter. But the first was perhaps Michael Tonello, who wrote the OG, treasure hunter’s bible Bringing Home the Birkin: My Life in Hot Pursuit of the World's Most Coveted Handbag in 2008.
Do these accounts only share information that’s been personally tested or verified? “It all came from on-ground research in the beginning,” confirms Arora. Today, she has a team of six spread across the US and the UK. “A lot of information also comes directly from the brand now, since I attend the shows and re-see in Paris.” Antonenkova says she’s constantly in touch with SAs around the world, and further supplements her information through conversations with her clients. “Personal research is becoming harder now, because I get recognised. They roll out the red carpet and sometimes even have the store director come meet me, which is great. But the special treatment is not good for research.”
And if you thought the brand would have reservations about Antonenkova spilling secrets about what many see as a smoke and mirrors game designed to keep desirability (and demand) at an all-time high, think again. “Sales associates have given me feedback that they’re very grateful, because I share information that they cannot,” she adds. “I know there are haters who are like ‘Hermès should sue her or ban her’. For what? For telling people to spend money at Hermès?”
