Luxury bags, watches & jewelry · side by side · updated June 26, 2026
A real Birkin is saddle-stitched by one artisan over many hours. The blind stamp, the thread angle and the hardware engraving expose the machine-made copy.
RealCheck › Luxury bags, watches & jewelry › Real vs fake Hermès
The comparison
| What to check | Genuine | Fake |
|---|---|---|
| Saddle stitching | Hand saddle-stitched with waxed linen thread: stitches sit at a consistent slight angle and are subtly, naturally irregular — the mark of one human hand. | Machine stitching that's dead-straight and too perfectly even, or stitches at inconsistent angles. |
| Blind stamp | Clean, evenly debossed logo + date letter + craftsman stamp, correctly placed for the model and era. | Stamp too deep/shallow, wrong font, wrong shape for the claimed year, or mislocated. |
| Hardware | Gold- or palladium-plated, heavy, engraved 'HERMÈS PARIS MADE IN FRANCE'; the turn-lock and Touraine screws are flush and precise. | Light or yellowish plating, shallow/misspelled engraving, or screws that don't align. |
| Leather & feet | Premium Togo/Clemence/Epsom grain; the bag stands squarely on its base studs; tonal, even edge paint. | Plasticky or overly uniform grain, a bag that won't stand straight, sloppy edge paint. |
| Symmetry & shape | Perfectly symmetrical handles, even sangles, structured corners that hold their shape. | Lopsided handles, soft mushy corners, uneven hardware placement. |
Tally the rows. A genuine item passes nearly all of them; a fake usually fails several even when it nails the obvious ones.
The code
Format: Hermès uses a heat-pressed 'blind stamp': the Hermès logo plus a date letter, historically enclosed in a shape (square, then circle, then no shape in recent years) that indicates the production year, accompanied by the artisan's craftsman mark. It is debossed without ink ('blind').
Where to find it: Under the front flap/strap on a Birkin/Kelly, or on an interior strap — placement is model-specific.
Buy the real thing
eBay's Authenticity Guarantee has qualifying items independently inspected by experts before they ship to you — a free third-party check on top of the tells above.
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