bringing home the birkin by michael tonello

Tonello, whose book is worthwhile even on the level of business strategy, developed a set of tactics that enabled him to outsmart Hermès salespeople. Some Hermès stores even told him that the waiting list was closed. His ace in the hole was Hermès’s insistence that buying a Birkin required putting one’s name on a waiting list. He quickly graduated to Hermès’s showiest products: crocodile Birkin handbags in the $20,000-and-up price range. He then became obsessed with digging up obscure Hermès items from stores’ old inventory and reselling them to Hermès fanatics. And he noticed that Hermès merchandise, though a trifle steep in stores ($295 for a pair of men’s cotton boxers), could be sold for even crazier sums on eBay. After pluckily deciding to change his life and move to glamorous Barcelona (a fluffy premise if ever there was one), he needed to make a living. Tonello found a canny way to capitalize on the cravings that Ms. And it has the rare advantage of being as much fun to read as it is to tote around. Tonello’s antic memoir takes a more interesting view of consumer culture. (Something very bad appears to have happened to a white pony.) That is the season’s high-water mark for either wretched excess or fabulousness, depending on your point of view.

After all, the flashiest beach book of the moment, Lauren Weisberger’s “Chasing Harry Winston,” has cover art depicting diamond rings stacked on the super-high spike heel of an inexplicably hairy shoe. Trumping the competition’s graphics took ingenuity. This is an expert feat of one-upmanship, since the most merchandise-minded beach books are hellbent on putting something either flauntable or edible on their covers. Tonello dishily delivers (he adores alliteration) them all.Įven better, when its Tiffany-blue dust jacket is removed, “Bringing Home the Birkin” looks as if it’s bound in Hermès crocodile. The genre’s four basic food groups are ambition, romance, travel and partying, and Mr. It’s amusingly snarky, with attitude to burn. Michael Tonello’s “Bringing Home the Birkin,” the story of one man’s relentless assault on the world’s horsiest luxury-goods label, may break the mold a bit, but it does a fine job of fulfilling this genre’s basic requirements.

There are two unorthodox things about this summer’s most adorable chick-lit book: It’s a work of nonfiction, and it’s written by a guy.

Bringing home the birkin by michael tonello