Hermès customers unable to secure a Birkin or Kelly through the brand’s own boutiques are increasingly buying on London’s secondary market, according to JULL, a specialist dealer with a private showroom in Chelsea Harbour that holds about 200 Hermès pieces in stock, including 60 Birkins.
According to the dealer’s published buying guides, Hermès does not sell its two best-known bags on request: boutique clients are offered pieces at the house’s discretion, and the offer rarely matches the size, leather, colour and hardware the customer asked for. JULL describes the Mini Kelly as the hardest bag in the current Hermès catalogue to be offered at retail, with demand running well ahead of production.
“Most of our clients have been on a boutique waiting list for a year or more,” said Guilherme Ribeiro, the founder of JULL. “They come to us because the bag they want is on the shelf today. They can see it, hold it and take it home the same afternoon.”
The company says its Mini Kelly selection, at about 40 pieces, is the largest in London. At the time of writing, its listed Birkins run from £16,500 for an ostrich Birkin 35 to £144,500 for a Himalayan crocodile Birkin 25, with exotic skins sitting in a different price bracket from calfskin, according to the dealer.
JULL says every bag is inspected by hand in its London workroom before it is listed, with the blind stamp, hardware, stitching, corners and interior checked, and any wear described plainly. Pieces are new, unworn or pre-owned and are sourced through European boutiques, the company says.
Clients can view a bag in person by appointment before paying, or have it filmed in close detail and delivered insured next day anywhere in the UK. Ribeiro argues that viewing before payment is what separates a specialist from an online marketplace, where a buyer typically commits before handling the bag and relies on a third-party seller’s description.
On purchases of £10,000 or more, the dealer says, the questions that matter are the bag’s condition, its provenance and whether the price is right for the specific colour and leather, since the same model can vary by tens of thousands of pounds depending on its specification.
“A Birkin or Kelly bought well from a specialist holds its value in pounds, not just in sentiment; the difference is condition, provenance and paying the right price for the specific colour and leather,” Ribeiro said.
Knight Frank’s Luxury Investment Index closed 2025 down 0.4 per cent, which the property group described as a year of stabilisation after two years of losses, and has risen 38.6 per cent over the past decade. Within the index, Hermès Birkin and Kelly bags fell 0.2 per cent over 2025 and, in Knight Frank’s words, “retained their pricing power”.
The firm reported that demand is rotating towards visibly worn pre-owned pieces, with the most active segment of the resale market now sitting between $6,000 and $9,000, driven by younger buyers, according to the luxury asset manager LUXUS.
At the top of the market, the Birkin owned by Jane Birkin herself, the bag’s namesake, sold for a record $10.1m at Sotheby’s in Paris, Knight Frank noted in the same report.
