The cat is out of the bag.
Lucy Liu, 57, is opening up about her experience on “Sex in the City.”
During Thursday’s edition of Vogue’s Life in Looks video series, the “Charlie’s Angels” actress revealed that she didn’t know what the “big deal” was around a Birkin bag, and why it needed security on the set.
Liu had a cameo on the “Sex and the City” Season 4 episode “Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda,” playing a fictional version of herself. In the episode, which originally aired in August 2001, she was one of Samantha’s (Kim Cattrall) PR clients.
Samantha name drops Liu to get a Hermès Birkin bag, and skips the five-year waiting period.
“I was playing myself and when they asked me to play me I was like, ‘What does that mean? What do people think of me?’” Liu recalled.
“This whole thing actually revolved around the Hermès bag. In the rehearsal, I was using this fake bag, and then when we actually shot … [there was] security, people dressed in suits like ‘Men in Black,’” she recalled. “They had a safe where this Hermès bag was. I was like, ‘What is the big deal with this bag?’ They had white gloves on, the whole nine yards.”
Ultimately, Liu concludes: “And you know what? It’s a big deal.”
The notoriously expensive Hermes Birkin Bag retails for around $10,000 around its lowest price point. Some have sold for over $500,000 and the most expensive Birkin sold for $10 million, at the Sotheby’s Paris Fashion Icons sale.
Japanese resale mogul Shinsuke Sakimoto, who purchased the $10 million bag, said, “It was the most expensive purchase I’ve ever made for a single item,” as reported by CNN. “It was very exciting, but it really made me sick to my stomach.”
“The resale value of particularly the Birkin and Kelly bags over the past 10 years has outpaced gold,” James Firestein, founder of luxury resale and authentication platform OpenLuxury, told Fortune.
“It’s similar to buying a Piccaso and holding it in your home, because you can look at it, you can enjoy it.”
Liu told Vogue that she eventually did realize why the bag “was a big deal.”
