PARIS — Paddles at the ready: In light of the overwhelming response to the sale of Jane Birkin’s original Hermès Birkin bag, Sotheby’s has decided to hold a live auction during Paris Couture Week.

Instead of bidding online, potential acquirers are now invited to gather at its Paris headquarters on July 10 at 4 p.m. for what promises to be a record-breaking Fashion Icons auction.

The original Birkin, acquired by Paris collector Catherine B. in 2000, was put on public display for the first time in continental Europe at Sotheby’s Paris galleries last fall, and then at Sotheby’s flagship in Hong Kong earlier this year, drawing thousands of visitors.

After the sale was announced, it was exhibited at Sotheby’s in New York City from June 6 to 12, further stoking excitement.

“The response has been truly worthy of the iconic status of this bag,” Morgane Halimi, Sotheby’s global head of handbags and fashion, told WWD. “We really got the feeling that people wanted to physically participate in the momentous day when this bag will change owners, and so we wanted to live up to those expectations.”

Sotheby’s is still fine-tuning the logistics for its inaugural Paris-based Fashion Icons sale, which will include a total of around 30 lots, including vintage clothing items by Azzedine Alaïa, Alexander McQueen and John Galliano, among others. “We will try to accommodate as many people as possible,” Halimi said.

Billed as “one of the most iconic fashion items ever created,” the all-black leather Birkin prototype commissioned in 1984 spawned one of the world’s most recognizable and coveted handbag styles, and turned the British actress and singer from a style icon into a household name.

“The Birkin is the Holy Grail of handbags, so the Birkin that is at the origin of all other Birkins is especially coveted,” Halimi remarked.

The most expensive handbag ever sold at auction is another Hermès design, the White Himalaya Niloticus Crocodile Diamond Retourné Kelly 28, which fetched $513,040 at Christie’s in Hong Kong in 2021.

Unlike any commercial version subsequently produced by Hermès, the Birkin prototype is distinguished by seven unique design elements, from its unusually wide bottom to its non-removable shoulder strap. Sotheby’s declined to share its estimate for the lot, but Halimi described it as priceless.

“There are established records for Birkins and Kellys at auction in the hundreds of thousands of euros. But the benchmark for this type of product can be found not just in handbags, but in the unique pieces with magical provenances that have come up for auction,” Halimi said.

Among them, she cited Princess Diana’s sheep sweater, which Sotheby’s sold for $1.1 million in its Fashion Icons auction last September, or Freddie Mercury’s silver snake bangle, worn in the “Bohemian Rhapsody” video, which went for $881,717, a record for a piece of jewelry belonging to a rock star.

“These are pieces that are rare because of their provenance, because of their uniqueness in the history of fashion, or the history of culture. Here, we’re dealing with a bag that is more unique than many works of art, because there is only one original Birkin,” Halimi said.

The product of a chance meeting on an airplane between Birkin and then Hermès chief executive officer Jean-Louis Dumas, the bag was exhibited at New York’s Museum of Modern Art as part of the show “Items: Is Fashion Modern?” in 2017 and again in 2021 at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum in the exhibition “Bags: Inside Out.”

“There’s a whole history that means you can’t just compare it to another bag, even if it’s a Birkin, or the most expensive Birkin ever sold at auction,” Halimi said.

The original Birkin has drawn interest from individual collectors as well as institutions like museums. “There are also collectors of unicorns, as we call them, or trophy hunters who specialize in collecting rare and unique pieces, so anything is possible. That’s the beauty of auctions: until the hammer falls, we won’t know,” she said.