Power of the Purse. Birkins and Kellys Dominate the Collectible Handbags Category.

For those following the growing auction market for luxury handbags, and wondering what might replace the ever-dominant Hermès Birkin and Kelly styles, experts at Sotheby’s and Christie’s don’t have much news.

“Birkins and Kellys are really sharing the top position in collectors’ hearts,” says Morgane Halimi, global head of handbags and fashion at Sotheby’s. She points out that in general, every size and style of Birkin and Kelly bags saw increases in average value and client interest. “They are perennial, highly desirable, and have become status symbols. And the Mini Kelly II, which was released in 2016, is slowly becoming a hit even among young collectors.”

Max Brownawell, head of the department for handbags and accessories at Christie’s (where Hermès bags account for 90% of sales) agrees. “Really, the collectible market for bags at this price point of $10,000 and up is exclusively going to be Hermès bags,” he says. “There’s a growing number of vintage Chanel bags that are considered highly collectible and valuable as well—bags that are iconic, such as Karl Lagerfeld designs from the ’90s. But very few bags from other brands hold their value at the level of Hermès.”

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Chanel vintage classics by Lagerfeld in the ’90s are also in high demand at Sotheby’s, where Chanel is the second-best seller. “His earliest bags from the ’80s and ’90s are the most popular of all vintage Chanel bags,” Halimi says.

Even so, those bags don’t breathe the same rarefied air as Hermès. The most expensive Chanel bag to sell at non-charity auction was Lagerfeld’s personal croc-embossed lambskin tote. It was sold complete with his 2011 FIAC contemporary art fair photo pass and a tag from the Chanel Paris-Bombay 2011/12 Métiers d’Art show. Given the illustrious provenance, it broke the record for a Chanel bag, selling for €94,500 (US$107,000) at the Sotheby’s estate auction of his property in December 2021.

Chanel’s top seller of 2024 at Sotheby’s was a gold lambskin Paris-Dubai Nights Gas Jerry Can bag with gold hardware from the 2015 Cruise collection. It was estimated to sell for between $5,000 and $7,000, but went for $33,600, far exceeding expectations.

The Pinnacle Bag

According to Sotheby’s, all 10 of the most expensive bags sold by the house in 2024 were Birkins or Kellys, and all but one was crafted from exotic crocodile or alligator skin. That lone non-exotic bag, claiming the No. 8 slot with a sale price of about $157,000, was a 2023 Midas Kelly 25 Sellier in black box calfskin leather with 18-karat gold hardware, hence its Midas label. The top spot on the list went to a 2021 Kelly 25 Himalaya with white-gold hardware set with 3.5 carats of diamonds, which sold for about $330,000.

Six of the 10 most expensive bags on the list were Himalaya styles, three of which had diamond-set 18-karat white gold hardware. Himalaya bags are so named for the exotic Nile crocodile that is distinctively dyed with an ombré effect of matte white and gray, evoking the snow-capped peaks of the Asian mountain range. When fitted with precious white-gold or even platinum diamond-set hardware, Himalayas reach record prices.

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Three spots in the top 10 were limited-edition Birkin 20 Faubourg styles in American alligator, two in shades of Snow and one in Midnight black, with prices ranging from $181,000 to $234,000. The first Faubourg Birkins, modeled on the architecture of the Paris flagship on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, debuted in 2019.

At a November 2021 Christie’s Hong Kong sale, a matte-white Himalaya Diamond Retourné Kelly 28, with 18-karat white-gold hardware set with 229 diamonds totaling 9.2 carats, sold for $512,880, cracking the half-million-U.S.-dollar mark and setting the record for the most expensive handbag sold at auction.

The earliest-known Hermès Celadon Himalayas emerged in 1994, and they were phased out of production in 2008. However, that year saw a new 30cm-size matte Himalayan Birkin that remained under the radar and was reserved for the brand’s VIP collectors. Then, Jean-Paul Gaultier featured a Himalaya Birkin at the 2010 Hermès’ spring runway show, making it an instant “grail” bag, and one with surprising longevity.

In 2012, Hermès introduced the 25cm Himalaya Birkin. The following year brought the Himalaya Kelly in more sizes, with a 35cm Himalaya Kelly added to the mix in 2020. Himalaya styles in other collections started appearing in 2016.

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Market Shifts

There are signs that the market for such extravagant bags has reached post-peak prices. “The most interesting trend we’ve seen is that exotic bags, which tend to sell for higher prices, have been a little bit soft,” says Brownawell. He explains that in general, exotics have come down over the last few years, while leather bags are going up steadily: “For certain sizes and styles, the prices for leather bags can sometimes be higher than the equivalent bag in an exotic.”

He attributes this trend to the growing demand for bags priced from $20,000 to $30,000, with huge numbers of buyers aspiring to ownership though they can’t possibly attain the pricier exotic Birkins and Kellys.

“It’s a much thinner market when you’re looking at bags that are in the $50,000-to-$200,000 range, and people who are buying in that higher range have a lot more ability to be picky about what they want,” he says.

The growing numbers of younger clients entering the market each season are unlikely to bid on a six-figure Himalaya Birkin right out of the gate. “They’re going to start out in leather, and they’ll probably want a black, brown, or gray leather Birkin,” Brownawell says. “That’s really where the market has been the strongest—the prices for a store-fresh, neutral-leather Birkin 25 or 30 have never been higher.”

He adds that limited editions are another bright spot—whether it’s new ones that are highly coveted for the first year after release before prices stabilize, or lesser-known vintage special editions. “Some vintage limited editions that haven’t been seen on the market could do extremely well, because I think there is a strong appetite among collectors for what they haven’t seen,” Brownawell says.

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One unexpected twist, he adds, is that some of the priciest Birkins aren’t necessarily the rarest. “If you want a diamond Himalaya Birkin, I can get you one, even two,” Brownawell says. “But there are much rarer bags out there that I probably couldn’t come up with, though it might be a much lower price point.”

At Sotheby’s, where handbags are one of the house’s fastest-growing departments, women buyers account for the majority of auctions worldwide. “We are seeing buyers as young as their 20s, with participants of our handbag auctions, both buyers and sellers, mostly in their 30s and 40s,” Halimi says. “That is significantly younger compared with some other categories sold at Sotheby’s.”

Women also make up the majority of handbag purchasers at Christie’s, where handbags are the only category dominated by female buyers. “It’s mostly women between the ages of 25 and 60,” Brownawell says. “Wealthy women, of all types—whether they are self-made, married well, or born into wealth—are attracted to Hermès bags.”

This article originally appeared in the February 2025 issue of Mansion Global Experience Luxury.

On Bastille Day, the scent of toasted bread, melting cheese, crêpes and velouté filled a heritage warehouse in Sydney’s Darlinghurst.

Inside Prim Haus, rooms had been transformed into an elegant interpretation of a contemporary French home. Cookware hung alongside market produce, appliances were placed within carefully composed domestic settings and live kitchens turned out French comfort food throughout the afternoon.

The occasion was La Maison de Tefal, an immersive celebration marking 70 years since a French engineer introduced an invention that would fundamentally change home cooking.

Tefal’s story began in 1956 with the commercial launch of what the company describes as the world’s first non-stick frying pan. Seven decades later, the business operates across cookware, kitchen appliances, garment care and floor care in more than 120 countries.

The scale of the modern brand is considerable, but its origins were remarkably domestic.

The invention that started in a French kitchen

In the early 1950s, French engineer Marc Grégoire began experimenting with polytetrafluoroethylene, better known as PTFE, after discovering its unusually effective non-stick properties.

The material was already known within industrial applications. Grégoire’s important contribution was developing a way to bond it securely to an aluminium disc.

According to the company’s history, a conversation with his wife inspired him to apply the process to cookware. The resulting pan allowed meat and eggs to be cooked using less fat, while making the surface considerably easier to clean.

Grégoire patented his non-stick frying-pan concept in 1954 and began selling the finished product in 1956. The new company’s name combined the French words for the two defining materials: Téflon and aluminium.

The attraction was immediate. This was innovation expressed through a simple, recognisable household problem. Food stuck to pans; the new Tefal pan was designed so it would not.

The idea quickly travelled beyond France. Tefal entered the United States in 1961, the same year the company established the production site at Rumilly, near the French Alps. Rumilly would become the centre of Tefal’s cookware expertise and develop an identity as the “frying pan capital of the world”.

The company says more than 35 million cookware items were manufactured at the Rumilly site in 2022. A local museum holds the 500 millionth pan produced by the factory, which came off the line in March 1994.

A Parisian home in the heart of Sydney

La Maison de Tefal translated that industrial history into a more intimate experience.

Held on 14 July, the anniversary used Bastille Day as both a cultural reference and a reminder that Tefal’s identity remains closely connected to French design and engineering.

Prim Haus was arranged as a sequence of domestic environments rather than a conventional product showroom. Guests moved through spaces devoted to cookware, kitchen appliances, garment care and floor care, with each collection presented within the rhythm of a modern home.

A French-market-inspired cooking area formed the social centre of the event. Live stations served croque-monsieur, crêpes and butternut velouté, demonstrating the products through food rather than static displays.

That distinction matters. Tefal’s most successful products have generally been those whose benefit can be understood almost immediately: a pan that releases food, a removable handle that saves cupboard space, an indicator showing when cookware has reached the correct temperature, or an appliance that automates part of a familiar cooking process.

Interactive demonstrations allowed guests to handle the products and see those functions in context. Heritage installations traced the brand’s development, while previews of newer releases connected its first frying pan with the much broader contemporary range.

The anniversary concluded with a champagne toast — an appropriately French punctuation mark for a company whose products have found their way into kitchens around the world.

Seventy years of practical invention

The non-stick frying pan established the operating principle Tefal continues to follow: find an everyday source of friction and develop a practical way to reduce it.

In 1996, the company introduced Ingenio, a modular cookware system built around removable handles. Pans could be stacked more efficiently and moved from cooktop to oven, table and refrigerator without the fixed handle of conventional cookware.

The concept anticipated the pressures that would reshape urban kitchens. As apartments became more compact and storage more valuable, cookware needed to occupy less room and serve more than one function.

Around the beginning of the following decade, Tefal introduced its heat-indicator technology, now known as Thermo-Signal. The circular marker changes appearance when the pan reaches its recommended cooking temperature, turning a technical question into a visual prompt.

In 2006, Tefal expanded the possibilities of countertop cooking with ActiFry. The appliance circulated hot air around food and used little or no added oil, helping establish a product category that would eventually become one of the most competitive areas of the global appliance market.

Innovation also moved beyond cooking. The Freemove cordless steam iron arrived in 2012, removing the cord from the active ironing movement while retaining a powered base.

The company’s current portfolio now extends across multicookers, grills, air fryers, blenders, ice-cream makers, garment steamers, irons and floor-care products. Although the categories are diverse, the common proposition remains convenience grounded in engineering.

The next generation of non-stick cookware

For its 70th year, Tefal has returned to the product that created the brand.

The new Excellence+ cookware range introduces what the company calls FusionCore technology. Tefal describes it as its most durable non-stick coating to date, designed to withstand intensive use and scratching.

As with any durability claim, consumers should follow the manufacturer’s care instructions and consider the applicable warranty rather than interpreting promotional language as a guarantee against every form of damage. But the focus on longer-lasting coatings reflects an important change in buyer expectations.

Convenience is no longer enough on its own. Modern households are increasingly concerned with how long products remain useful, whether they can be repaired and what happens when they reach the end of their working life.

Tefal has responded in several ways. Its Renew cookware uses recycled aluminium and a ceramic non-stick coating, while Groupe SEB has expanded cookware recycling initiatives in international markets. For many small domestic appliances, the group also promotes a 15-year repairability commitment based on parts availability and access to authorised repairers.

The details and warranty periods vary by product and country, so Australian buyers should check the conditions attached to an individual appliance. Nevertheless, repairability represents a meaningful shift from the assumption that a failed countertop appliance should simply be discarded.

From French manufacturer to global household group

Tefal joined Groupe SEB in 1968, giving the company greater international distribution and the resources to expand beyond cookware.

Founded in 1857 and headquartered in France, Groupe SEB has grown into a global small-appliance and cookware business with more than 30 brands. Its portfolio includes All-Clad, Krups, Moulinex, Rowenta, Lagostina and WMF, with operations extending across more than 150 countries.

Within that group, Tefal remains one of the flagship names — and one of the clearest examples of how a single invention can become the foundation for an international consumer brand.

Its longevity has not come from making everyday objects more complicated. The strongest Tefal products do the opposite. They take a small uncertainty, inconvenience or frustration and design it out of the task.

That was the value of Marc Grégoire’s original frying pan. It did not ask people to change what they cooked. It made the existing process easier, more predictable and less difficult to clean afterwards.

Seventy years later, that deceptively modest principle continues to guide the company.

La Maison de Tefal celebrated the products, the French heritage and the anniversary itself. Yet the larger story was visible at every cooking station and demonstration: innovation becomes lasting only when people can use it without having to think about the technology underneath.

For Tefal, the next 70 years will be shaped by new materials, smarter appliances, changing homes and greater expectations around durability. Its challenge will be to keep evolving without losing sight of the insight that started everything — that the most valuable household inventions often solve the most ordinary problems.

Tefal at a glance

Founded: France, 1956
Founder: Engineer Marc Grégoire
Original innovation: Commercialisation of the first non-stick frying pan
Manufacturing heritage: Rumilly, France
Notable innovations: Ingenio, Thermo-Signal, ActiFry and Freemove
Latest cookware development: Excellence+ with FusionCore technology
Parent company: Groupe SEB
International presence: More than 120 countries
Australian website: Tefal Australia