The Cost Of Melania Trump's Birkin Bag Collection Will Make You Pause
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Melania Trump spends a lot of money on high fashion, whether it's $10,000 for a black sequin suit by Micheal Kors, or a $51,500 Dolce & Gabbana floral coat. Chief among these designer purchases is her love of Birkin bags, which don't come cheap. The Birkin bag, named after British-French singer Jane Birkin, who inspired it after dropping the contents of her bag on a flight next to the head of Hermès, has gone from a carry-all accoutrement for moneyed mothers, to a designer label luxury item worth its weight in gold. Coveted for materials as unique as alligator skin, you can spend up to $2 million on one. While Melania doesn't appear to own a single Birkin bag valued that high, she's been seen toting an assortment of these luxury items enough to amount to around $200,000.
According to Donald Trump's 250 pages of 2024 financial disclosures, Melania earns enough from speaking engagements, NFT tokens, and real estate investments to fund her Birkin habit. For example, a single speaking engagement earned her $237,000 in April 2024, the licensing fee for NFT tokens bearing her likeness yielded Mrs. Trump $330,607, and her real estate investments — investments that could become impactful unrealized capital gains — include New York properties valued at $500,000 to $1 million, in addition to rental properties in Slovenia earning her between $15,001 and $50,000 per month in rent. Finally, in October 2024, Melania became a New York Times best-selling author for her autobiography "Melania: A Memoir," which Amazon quickly swooped in to grab the rights to turn into a movie for $40 million.
Here's how much some of Melania Trump's Birkin bags are worth
A quick browser search of Melania Trump with a Birkin bag offers several sightings. She was seen carrying a brown Birkin Bag in June 2017 worth approximately $13,461 as she moved into the White House for the first time. In a full circle moment as she made her final appearance as FLOTUS in 2021, she donned another bag more compact in size, but expanded in cost: This time, her black Birkin was worth $75,000. Then in 2024, while her husband was campaigning for his second presidential term, Melania was hanging out in New York with a white $33,000 Birkin bag and the company of her security detail.
Overall, Melania has been spotted with at least six different Birkin bags. This collection includes the aforementioned black Niloticus crocodile Birkin, a classic black Birkin, a rouge Togo leather Birkin, and a Clemence leather Birkin, which all have estimated retail values of $14,000 to $20,000 each. Looking at all of these Birkin bags, it's obvious that Melania doesn't view Birkin as a luxury brand that's a waste of money.
As such, a rough estimate of how much the first lady's Birkin bag collection is worth, based on the value of just six bags she's been seen carrying, is around $200,000. However, these sightings only go back as far as 2021, so it's entirely possible Melania has since increased her collection of Birkin bags, or has others that have never been photographed.