From the author

Many refer to the supremely wealthy not as the 1% but rather as the top 1% of the 1%, the 700,000 people for whom the world is their oyster. For luxury goods makers and marketers, these people are hard to find, yet quick to spend unlimited dollars and resources to get whatever they want when they want it. Even more rare is the ability to consistently find these people and successfully engage them over and over. That is the story behind the story – the story of a woman and her company which conquered the rarified world of haute couture through reselling a single, and singular, product. The more I observed Privé Porter’s business, its customers, and the peripheral stories, the more I realized that for almost everyone involved, acquiring the Hermès Birkin, let alone the one one wants, let alone one at all, as collector or a seller, is an expensive, emotional, and at times, compulsive exercise fraught with daunting pitfalls. For Privé Porter clientele, carrying the Birkin of her dreams provides a much different emotional return than many people would experience owning a Ferrari. Yes, significant wealth helps buying Ferrari, but immaculate examples are plentiful. Buying a Birkin is far more complicated, a well-known maze of Hermès manipulation, regardless of wealth, or perhaps enabled by wealth. For the woman who successfully amasses a collection of 8, 10 or more Birkins – to spend $125,000 to $1 million in handbags – is the desire to exude a level of savvy and skill. It’s an unspoken Darwinian-laden communiqué to her equally-wealthy peers that she possesses rare access to Birkins that money, almost, can’t buy.