When Men Carry Birkins: From Status Symbol To Style Storytelling

Men and their Birkins

How a once-feminine status symbol became one of the most unexpected accessories in a man’s wardrobe — and the characters who wear them best.

There’s a delicious little contradiction at the heart of the Birkin: born from a practical gripe about a sloppy handbag, elevated into Hermès’ most mythical object, then repurposed as a flex by men who would never once be described as demure. Over the last decade, the Birkin stopped being strictly ‘hers.’ Athletes, rappers, designers, and tastemakers, from Drake to Virgil Abloh, from G-Dragon to Wisdom Kaye, have taken the bag and folded it into very different vocabularies of masculinity: protective, theatrical, playful, performative.

Here are the few men who’ve owned the forever IT Bag and its iterations in their closet

Virgil Abloh’s custom Birkins and an archive’s worth of examples

Long before runway photographers codified the ‘man with a Birkin’ look, Virgil Abloh was doing it. He owned dozens of Hermès pieces and famously made at least one custom Birkin for Off-White in the mid-2010s; after his passing, curators and press catalogued a substantial archive that includes many of the bags he used as props and personal objects. In short: Abloh treated the Birkin as a toolkit — a raw icon to be subverted, staged, and worn.

Lionel Messi: the footballer who brought Birkin to the pitch

Lionel Messi has been photographed carrying Hermès pieces that read like wardrobe punctuation — one widely shared clip and local press coverage showed him with a black Hermès cargo/HAC-style Birkin (a 40cm Haut à Courroies variant commonly used as a travel tote), an unlikely sight at a football ground and a neat example of sports and luxury colliding. 

Wisdm (Wisdom Kaye) is the influencer in crocodile.

TikTok-and-runway star Wisdom Kaye has leaned into maximal, gender-fluid luxury and posted images of crocodile Hermès Birkins — think amethyst/crocodile variants, as part of his regular outfit tableaux. For influencers like him, the Birkin is a styling instrument as much as it is an investment. The visual evidence lives on his social feeds (and his public profiles reference the bags directly). 

Anand Ahuja coordinating couple style with Birkins  

Anand Ahuja and Sonam Kapoor have been photographed carrying near-matching Hermès Haut à Courroies / HAC styles (the HAC being the house’s original, utilitarian design closely related to the Birkin). In Ahuja’s case, the bags read like part of a carefully constructed ‘it-couple’ wardrobe rather than a solitary flex. And while we’ve seen him carrying this one black HAC, I’m very sure his closet hides a few more! 

Travis Scott’s outsized, theatrical Birkins (HAC / travel 50s)

Travis Scott famously turned up in New York lugging a giant Hermès Haut à Courroies, often mistaken in the press for a ‘giant Birkin,’ and the imagery stuck. The oversized, crocodile/exotic variants and how the piece punctuates his streetwear looks; for Travis, the bag plays as a costume and prop as much as an accessory.

Drake: The collector who ‘buys Birkins for the future wife’ (and sometimes gifts them)

Drake has long been linked to Birkin collecting — a passion he's mentioned in interviews, and one that editorial shoots and home tours have confirmed, with rows of Hermès displayed almost like trophies. He’s even gifted Birkins onstage (a recent example: a pink Birkin handed to a concert-goer in 2023), cementing the narrative that for Drake the Birkin is both a collection object and a performance prop. 

G-Dragon: the K-pop star for whom Hermès is part of the language

G-Dragon’s relationship with luxury has been well documented. The Korean superstar mixes Chanel, Hermès and other houses with near-academic enthusiasm. He has repeatedly carried with him Hermès pieces and cargo/HAC-style Birkins in his rotation; because much of his Birkin coverage lives on social platforms and in style roundups, the best we can say is: he’s a visible Birkin wearer and collector in the K-pop fashion ecosystem. 

Why this trend matters (and what it says) 

A man carrying a Birkin used to be a headline-grabber because it upset an unwritten rule that handbags are for women. That rule is evaporating. For designers and style influencers, the Birkin is an object lesson in iconography — it’s recognisable, expensive, and malleable. For athletes and rappers, it’s status theatre: an object that signals access to the highest tier of luxury. For people like Virgil Abloh, the Birkin became a raw material; for Drake, it’s an heirloom to be gifted; for Wisdom Kaye, it’s a texture in a storyboard. The common thread isn’t gender so much as storytelling: each man uses the bag to craft a distinct version of himself.

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