2026: Birkins & Ballplayers
First, Messi with a Cargo HAC in 2025. Now Team France and Norway, rolling into the World Cup with Hermès on hand.
Dana Auslander | CEO, LUXUS | June 2026
Back in 2025, Messi showed up to Argentina camp carrying a Cargo HAC. It was not a kit bag or a sponsor duffel. A Hermès Cargo HAC, the old saddle bag reborn as an athlete flex, swinging from his hand like it was nothing. Most people saw a footballer with a pricey bag, but I knew this was the start of something big. The most beloved athlete on earth was treating a Birkin like carry-on, and overnight, the bag went from a female-coded asset to a sports trophy.
France we expected. They’re France. Norway showing up loaded was the part that genuinely surprised me, in the best way.
Team France ran a full trunk show at the airport. Dembélé came through arrivals with a black Birkin. Cherki had a beige Kelly Maxi. Enough of the squad turned the terminal into a runway that the photos were everywhere within hours. Then Norway landed, and Haaland out-bagged the lot of them with a HAC Birkin 50. The internet promptly crowned him its “Hermès baddie.” Word is there’s a Birkin tucked inside one of his Birkins.
Knicks Fever Also translated to Birkins
Here’s what I keep telling people. Watch the Knicks in the spring and the Birkins are courtside, on the wives and girlfriends, custom charms and all. Watch FIFA this summer and the same bags are in the players’ own hands. Nothing about the bag changed. The person holding it did. Jordyn Woods even had a “lucky bag” that supposedly clinched the Knicks’ title, paraded everywhere after the win. But that one was her own $125 clutch, not a Hermès anything. A perfect gimmick, and the Birkins courtside next to it were the ones quietly holding their value.
That’s the whole thesis in one swap. The Birkin is a status object, and status doesn’t pick a lane. It’ll sit in the front row at the Garden on Kylie Jenner and it’ll clear customs with the best striker alive. When a bag keeps turning up in the most watched rooms on the planet and nobody’s being paid to hold it, that’s our thesis at play.
The Birkin is Androgynous
Here’s the shift that actually matters to me. Five years ago a Birkin read as a woman’s asset, full stop. Something your wife, girlfriend (or mistress!) wanted, not something you’d carry through an airport yourself. That coding is just gone now. Messi carries one. Haaland collects them like trophies. Christian McCaffrey turns up with a HAC. The bag didn’t change a single stitch. What changed is who’s allowed to want one, and the answer turned out to be everyone.
It also clears up something I hit constantly on the raise. Most of our investors are men (we love you guys), and a good number showed up a little sheepish, like a Birkin fund wasn’t really their thing. Then the best players alive start sporting Hermès like spon con and the awkwardness was replaced with downright pride. The category was never really gendered. The cameras only made it impossible to miss.
What we’re doing with it
The bags lighting up this tournament are the same names we hold: Birkin, Kelly and most importantly the HAC, in the leathers and sizes people actually fight over. Product placement with athletes has been in the plan from the start, and Edition 03 is where we stop watching from the stands. And it’s a bigger picture than handbags. Our partners at Julien’s Auctions are putting Pelé’s World Cup pieces back on the block this July. Sotheby’s, now the NBA’s official game-worn house, has been moving Knicks jerseys from the Cup run all season. Worn objects from the biggest names in sport are starting to trade.
Reporting referenced: Vogue on France’s World Cup arrivals; coverage of Erling Haaland’s Hermès collection; reports of Messi’s Cargo HAC at Argentina camp (Sept 2025); Julien’s Auctions “Sports Legends” July 2026 sale; Sotheby’s NBA game-worn auctions. vogue.com/article/world-cup-france-hermes-chanel-louis-vuitton-bags
