Secure the bag, indeed.
When Kanye West presented Julia Fox and four friends with Hermès Birkins at her birthday party last week, the headline-making moment marked the culmination of several days of nonstop work for Michelle Lovelace.
The personal shopper and stylist, who goes by @meechthestylist on Instagram, Page Six Style tells that the rapper’s team reached out at the end of January to help West find a special gift for Fox.
“They decided to do a Birkin and he definitely wanted to stick with an exotic [skin]which is how she ended up getting the ostrich,” Lovelace, 28, said.
“And then the next day they were like, ‘Wait, we actually want to get more, because he wants to gift all her close friends one, too. i was like, no way. I couldn’t believe it at first.”
While price wasn’t a concern — “There was no budget,” Lovelace confirmed — the Queens-bred fashion pro only had “four or five days” to get the job done.
That’s no small feat considering Birkins typically can’t be purchased in-store like other luxury handbags; as elusive as they are expensive (anywhere from $10,000 into the mid-six figures for rare versions), they’re more often found on the resale market† But competition for the coveted carryalls is still fierce; Lovelace tells us one of the bags she’d earmarked for West even sold out from under her.
“I was freaking out. And then his team was like, ‘Well, he really wants this, so you have to try to find it,’” she recalled of the challenging task of tracking down the prized purses. “My anxiety was definitely through the roof.”
While luxury reseller Madison Avenue Couture tells Page Six Style it recently sold five Birkins to a “mystery buyer” that fit the descriptions of the ones received by Fox and friends, Lovelace declined to share her Hermès sources with us.
“It’s kind of like asking a drug dealer where he gets his drugs,” she quipped.
But the stylist and shopper came through, managing to bag four Birkins in Togo and Epsom leather in various shades of blue (per West’s requested color palette) in addition to Fox’s rare black ostrich style with rose gold hardware, itself easily worth $45,000.
Lovelace even flew from Los Angeles, where she’s currently based, to New York to present West and Fox with the bounty before the latter’s birthday bash.
“At first, he was a little nonchalant … not realizing the demand and how the Hermès market works,” she recalled of West’s response. “But then Julia’s reaction … she was just like, ‘Oh my God, how did you pull this off?’ Her reaction [became] his reaction, and I ended up getting a hug. I was like, ‘Whoa, Kanye West is hugging me!’”
While Lovelace has also shopped for superstars including Cardi B, DJ Mustard and the City Girls in addition to several NFL athletes — “Everyone knows everything that I sell is really legit,” she explained — the young entrepreneur described working with West as “probably the peak of my career.”
“It definitely unlocked a new goal that I didn’t even know I could accomplish,” she added. “I still can’t really bask in the moment because it feels so unreal.”