Bringing Home the Birkin: My Life in Hot Pursuit of the World's Most Coveted Handbag

Bringing Home the Birkin \ Chapter One\ Barcelona on the Brain\ I've always thought the use of a ringing phone to symbolize the onset of great personal change was a cheap plot device, and a gross oversimplification of the various factors that inspire human metamorphosis. However, now I know better: sometimes you really can trace it all back to a phone call.\ In my particular case, that life-changing phone call came early one wintry Cape Cod day—early enough that my roommate, Kate, and I were still cheerfully ensconced in our morning routine of Peet's coffee, PJs, and Rosie O'Donnell. Neither the caller nor the subject matter was by any means unusual—it was the Boston-based agency that represented me, giving me my newest assignment. A weeklong hair and makeup job for IBM in Barcelona, it had the allure of an escape from the drab and drear of mid-March Provincetown. The call certainly felt routine at the time, but we don't always know our Rubicon when it rings . . .\ At least workwise, things weren't so shabby. I had a career that people who didn't know better might consider glamorous. As a beautician who specialized in commercial photography, I had spent most of the last decade trigger-happy with a can of hairspray and a powder puff. And somehow, along my merry way, I had also cofounded a company. Named Team, it was an agency that represented artists who worked, in one capacity or another, in the photography and advertising industries. The concept was both convenience and strength in numbers. Normally, an advertising exec needed to make about half a dozen phone calls to pull together a photo shoot. What mycompany did was turn those six calls into one. Makeup artists, hairstylists, wardrobe stylists, location scouts, production managers, food stylists—we had it all under one roof. But good as it had been to me, my initial euphoria at being part of the fashion industry I had always worshipped as spectator was starting to wane. I had learned that celebrities were just people with name recognition, and photo shoots were as tedious as board meetings, once you had been to hundreds of them. Ten years of crafting updos and vanquishing shiny noses had driven me to uncharacteristic self-analysis. Was this really how I wanted to spend the rest of my life? Maybe not, but for now I knew one thing: I was going to Spain.\ I loved traveling for work, eagerly snapping up what the industry called "go-away jobs." Nomadic by nature, I took the adage "home is where the heart is" literally—a hotel room morphed into home as long as I was in it (with the added bonuses of crisp sheets, fresh towels, and chocolates on my pillow). But lately I found myself becoming more jaded by my globe-trotting. Not because of the silly things you always heard those bridge-club biddies bemoaning in the airport—it wasn't lost luggage or the lack of a proper bagel that had me down. I didn't mind the calculus of currency conversion or the etymology of exotic entrées. No, it wasn't the inconvenience inherent to travel that was burning me out. It was boredom. I had increasingly noticed a sinister sameness about each of these foreign cities. Before my very eyes, every place was turning into every place else. I fervently hoped that Barcelona would prove to be the exception.\ I sighed with disappointment and slumped against the hot vinyl seat of the taxi. Other than the flamenco music on the radio and the blinding glare of the Catalan sun, so far Barcelona felt about as foreign to me as Boston. Tacky billboards advertising electronics and cheap hotels flashed by my window at an alarming rate. Was there any place left in the world that didn't look like one giant strip mall? Maybe it was time for me to settle down. Maybe I needed the white picket fence and the Weber grill after all.\ A mere five minutes later, my cynicism forgotten, I was as mesmerized by the view as a midwesterner crossing the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan. I didn't know which way to look. To my left loomed the impressive bulk of the 1992 Olympic Stadium, capped off by a towering white spire that was an unlikely mating of futuristic space station and computer-generated sculpture. To my right, the Mediterranean. I was dazzled not only by the turquoise shimmer of the sea but by the hundreds of boats lining the docks. Luxury cruise ships, privately owned yachts, behemoth tankers, modest sailboats—somehow, seeing one of the world's biggest ports was far more impressive than reading about it in Fodor's. Suddenly, I was as excited as a little kid on his first field trip.\ But it wasn't until we left the highway and entered the city's perimeter that I truly fell under its spell. None of my extensive jet-setting had prepared me for Barcelona's unique urban landscape—palm trees edged the narrow streets, ornate buildings leaned companionably against each other, and laundry adorned nearly every balcony. The architecture spanned centuries of design—gothic intermingled with modernist, contemporary coalesced with classic. It could have been jarring to the senses, but as I would later learn, Barcelona had a way of turning the incongruous into the harmonious. It looked like the European city I had always dreamed of but, of late, had despaired of ever finding. I was captivated.\ My eight-hour days of grooming models and painting faces put a dent in what little time I had to prowl the city. However, even with the constraints of the IBM gig cutting into my tourist time, I still sampled enough of the Barcelona lifestyle to grow ever more enamored. My first instincts about the city's physical charm had been wrong—it was far more spectacular than I originally supposed. With a population of nearly two million spread out over sixty square miles, Barcelona is segmented into dozens of neighborhoods, each possessed of its own particular charm. I was hard-pressed to find an undesirable location; the place was a real estate agent's wet dream.\ Bringing Home the Birkin. Copyright © by Michael Tonello. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Prologue 11 Barcelona on the Brain 32 The Spanish Indecision 83 Vespas and Vespers 144 Warding Off Trouble 195 Career Chop Suey 246 Horseshoes and Handkerchiefs 287 Silk Serendipity 338 Le Monde d'Wish Lists 389 The Pyrenees Passing 4210 Living It Up Between the Birkin and Barcelona ("Michael's Theme") 4711 Birkin Bankruptcy 5512 Orange You Glad You Asked? 6013 The Formula 6714 Smoke and Mirrors 7115 Road Trip Redux 7416 How Do I Buy These? ... Let me Count the Ways... 7917 Knight in Shining Croc 8818 Ping-Pong I'll Play, but Purse Penelope? No Way! 9919 Parisian Purse Pipeline 10820 Devilish Prada Pants and Heavenly Cuisine 11421 Chilean Charades and Buenos Birkins 12322 Blueberries and BlackBerries 13023 A Roster of Reservations 13724 A Yen for Hermès 15125 Shop 'Til You Drop 15826 Capricious Life 16327 The Italian Way 17228 In Hermès We Trust, Aston We Shall Receive 17829 Creamsicles and Moonstones 19030 There's More Than One Way to Skin a Crocodile 19931 Hermès, We Have a Hostage Situation 20432 Mr. Sherlock Hermès 21333 Fellini Film Noir 22234 Found Money, Hidden Grace 23335 A Birkin for Mom 242Epilogue 255Glossary of Hermès Terms 259Acknowledgments 262

\ From Barnes & NobleFirst, a one-stop tutorial on the title: Hermès Birkin handbags set the standard for female accessories. Prices for this French high fashion item begin at $7,500; reputedly, there is a two-year waiting list for prospective buyers. Michael Tonello's Bringing Home the Birkin chronicles his hunt for not one prize Birkin but a whole multitude. Gaining access to Hermès's elite hierarchy, this resourceful wheeler-dealer learns seldom-revealed secrets about the coveted accessory. Short of a Birkin, the best fashion tote around.\ \ \ \ \ Arianna Huffington“The one-step, one-stop shop guide to buying a Birkin.”\ \ \ Tim Gunn“Part comedy, part history, part treasure hunt, Michael Tonello’s memoir is a romping sociological inquiry. If you’re like me, you’ll be transfixed and wanting more!”\ \ \ \ \ Jennifer Weiner“I devoured, and adored Bringing Home the Birkin, the story of how one man turned the fashionable set’s obsession with Hermès’ signature handbag into a handsome, globe-trotting career.”\ \ \ \ \ Charlotte Observer“A deliciously quick nonfiction read.”\ \ \ \ \ Maclean's“The fashion world is about to be handed its own Da Vinci Code with Bringing Home the Birkin.”\ \ \ \ \ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette“A witty and engaging retrospective on [Tonello’s] long career traipsing the globe as a purveyor of the Birkin bag.”\ \ \ \ \ New York Times“This summer’s most adorable chick-lit book. . . . It’s smart. It’s fizzy. It’s amusingly snarky, with attitude to burn. ”\ \ \ \ \ glamour.com“The perfect, fluffy and fun beach read.”\ \ \ \ \ moderntonic.com“In his peppy, addictive memoir . . . [Tonello] details the comical lengths to which he’s gone to snag hundreds of Birkins that he then sells (with a steep mark-up) on eBay.”\ \ \ \ \ New York Daily News“Hermès’ worst nightmare.”\ \ \ \ \ Wall Street Journal“[A] sunny memoir. . . . The prose is vivid, the tone lighthearted. Mr. Tonello comes off as the fantasy gay best friend immortalized in contemporary women’s fiction: sassy, plucky, optimistic—oh, and he can get you a Birkin.”\ \ \ \ \ straight.com“A deliciously addictive true tale of continent-hopping, celebrity-schmoozing, and a crazy-like-a-fox quest for that Hermès “it” bag, the Birkin. Haute read, indeed.”\ \ \ \ \ Boston Herald“ [Tonello] reveals the key to scoring that Holy Grail of handbags in a clever memoir.”\ \ \ \ \ Miami Herald“[A] memoir of . . . madcap travels, triumphs and humiliations. [Tonello] peels back the layers of pretension at the eminent design house. . . . Anyone who’s ever stepped into a luxury boutique and felt the sting of the doorman’s disapproval will find a hero in Tonello.”\ \ \ \ \ Huffington Post“The one-step, one-stop shop guide to buying a Birkin.”\ \ \ \ \ The Globe and Mail“Tonello recounts the strange and serendipitous tale of how he went from cleaning out his closet to being one of the busiest Internet resellers of Birkin bags in the world.”\ \ \ \ \ Minneapolis Star Tribune“Fascinating. . . . The sassy and resourceful Tonello built a very lucrative eBay resale business from his apartment, specializing in Hermès scarves and the French luxury purveyor’s highly desired Birkin bag. It’s hard not to be swept up in his delightful one-man Birkin Brigades.”\ \ \ \ \ No SourceBoston Globe bestseller\ \ \ \ \ New York Times“This summer’s most adorable chick-lit book. . . . It’s smart. It’s fizzy. It’s amusingly snarky, with attitude to burn. ”\ \ \ \ \ Miami Herald“[A] memoir of . . . madcap travels, triumphs and humiliations. [Tonello] peels back the layers of pretension at the eminent design house. . . . Anyone who’s ever stepped into a luxury boutique and felt the sting of the doorman’s disapproval will find a hero in Tonello.”\ \ \ \ \ Wall Street Journal“[A] sunny memoir. . . . The prose is vivid, the tone lighthearted. Mr. Tonello comes off as the fantasy gay best friend immortalized in contemporary women’s fiction: sassy, plucky, optimistic—oh, and he can get you a Birkin.”\ \ \ \ \ New York Daily News“Hermès’ worst nightmare.”\ \ \ \ \ Minneapolis Star Tribune“Fascinating. . . . The sassy and resourceful Tonello built a very lucrative eBay resale business from his apartment, specializing in Hermès scarves and the French luxury purveyor’s highly desired Birkin bag. It’s hard not to be swept up in his delightful one-man Birkin Brigades.”\ \ \ \ \ Charlotte Observer“A deliciously quick nonfiction read.”\ \ \ \ \ Boston Herald“ [Tonello] reveals the key to scoring that Holy Grail of handbags in a clever memoir.”\ \ \ \ \ The Globe and Mail“Tonello recounts the strange and serendipitous tale of how he went from cleaning out his closet to being one of the busiest Internet resellers of Birkin bags in the world.”\ \ \ \ \ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette“A witty and engaging retrospective on [Tonello’s] long career traipsing the globe as a purveyor of the Birkin bag.”\ \ \ \ \ Maclean's“The fashion world is about to be handed its own Da Vinci Code with Bringing Home the Birkin.”\ \ \ \ \ Huffington Post“The one-step, one-stop shop guide to buying a Birkin.”\ \ \ \ \ glamour.com“The perfect, fluffy and fun beach read.”\ \ \ \ \ moderntonic.com“In his peppy, addictive memoir . . . [Tonello] details the comical lengths to which he’s gone to snag hundreds of Birkins that he then sells (with a steep mark-up) on eBay.”\ \ \ \ \ straight.com“A deliciously addictive true tale of continent-hopping, celebrity-schmoozing, and a crazy-like-a-fox quest for that Hermès “it” bag, the Birkin. Haute read, indeed.”\ \ \ \ \ Kirkus ReviewsPeriodically charming but fluffy comic memoir. Semi-bored Massachusetts-based hairstylist Tonello "had spent most of the decade trigger-happy with a can of hairspray and a powder puff" and was ready for a change. A temporary gig in Barcelona convinced him that Spain was the place he really ought to be and that having "too much shit to move" wasn't a good enough reason to stay put. He took the plunge and happily relocated. Once settled across the pond, Tonello drifted into a new business venture: reselling Hermes products on eBay. The most exciting pieces of merchandise he dealt with were the infamously high-end Birkin handbags, and eventually he became obsessed with them. Can the average reader relate to a several-hundred page search for personal and professional Birkin Nirvana? Probably not, but the primary problem with Tonello's debut is bigger than that. The "in search of . . . " subgenre is just about played out. Considering how many of these books clog the shelves, chances are good that a title will blend in with its brethren unless either the object sought or the author is utterly compelling. Despite Tonello's deft sense of humor, sharp observational skills, an appreciation for the absurd and some positive energy, his confessional travelogue/how-to is relatively undistinguished and indistinguishable. Clever yet unremarkable. Agent: Laura Yorke/Carol Mann Agency\ \