How to Authenticate a Hermès Birkin or Kelly

Every Hermès Birkin and Kelly is made by a single craftsperson, start to finish, inside an Hermès workshop — which is exactly why the details are so consistent from bag to bag, and so hard for counterfeiters to fully replicate. Here's what we look at.

1. The blind stamp

Look for a small stamp inside the bag, usually near the top of one side panel, containing a letter or letter-pair inside a shape (a circle, square, or other symbol depending on the year) — this indicates the production year. Genuine blind stamps are crisp and shallow, pressed cleanly into the leather rather than looking inked on top of it.

2. Hand-stitching, not machine-stitching

Hermès uses a saddle-stitch technique — two needles working from opposite sides of the leather through a single hole — which produces slightly uneven, hand-done stitching on close inspection, with knots that sit inside the leather rather than on the surface. Perfectly uniform, machine-straight stitching on a bag claiming to be a Birkin or Kelly is a strong warning sign.

3. Hardware weight and finish

Hermès hardware — the lock, keys, and clochette — is solid and substantial, in palladium or gold-tone finishes that hold up under close light without visible plating wear on a well-cared-for bag. The lock mechanism should turn smoothly and the keys should actually fit and function.

4. Leather quality and edge painting

The edges of the leather (visible along seams and the base) are hand-painted and burnished in even layers, giving a smooth, slightly domed finish rather than a flat or glossy plastic-like coat. Genuine Hermès leather — Togo, Epsom, Clemence, and others — has a texture and give that's difficult to convincingly fake at scale.

5. Proportions and silhouette

Because these bags are made to exact templates, proportions matter — handle height, the taper of the sides, the position of the straps. Comparing suspicious measurements against a verified example of the same size and style is one of the more reliable checks available.

6. Full set of accessories

An authentic Birkin or Kelly should have come with a lock, two keys, a clochette (the small leather bell-shaped tab the lock hangs from), and often a felt protective cover and box. A missing clochette or mismatched hardware finish across pieces is worth asking about.

Why we still recommend professional authentication

Given how much these pieces are worth, and how sophisticated some counterfeits have become, we don't rely on visual checklists alone. Every Hermès piece we list is evaluated in-house by our authentication team before it goes up for sale, and we're glad to walk you through the specifics of any individual bag before you buy.