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It’s pouring on the Upper East Side, but even though she’s lugging summer’s hottest “It” bag, Natalie Mileo is fine with getting drenched.
The Queens resident “used to freak out” if her pricey Chanel and Fendi handbags got a drop of rain or a speck of dirt on them. But Mileo’s new must-have isn’t a “quiet luxury” staple with gold-plated logos and delicate Italian suede.
It’s slime green and plastic.
Say bonjour to the Jelly Firkin, a handbag shaped like the Hermès Birkin bag — a giant leather tote named for willowy ’60s singer Jane Birkin and long considered the ultimate status bag among fashion’s elite — but made from the fun, gummy material also used to make gym class kickballs.
An evil twin to the famous French status bag, the Jelly Firkin has a devoted fan base that includes K-pop stars, aloof Hollywood auteurs, and even real Hermès collectors like Mileo.
But while an actual Birkin costs as much as $100,000, the jelly version is just $35.
“My friends won’t touch anything that isn’t designer, but I think it’s great,” Mileo, 40, who goes by the moniker “Bratty Natty” on social media thanks to her luxury shopping binges, told The Post. “It reminds you not to take fashion so seriously.”
Mileo said she gets “a lot of questions” when carrying her plastic lookalike around Manhattan.
“Some people might be mad because they paid so much for a Birkin, and now there are these cute knockoffs,” she sighed. “But I’m like, ‘Relax. It’s a joke… I have 10 real Hermès bags. This one, I can actually take to the pool.’”
Way back in the early 2000s, the Jelly Firkin had a cousin — the Jelly Kelly — built to look like an Hermès Kelly bag. It was carried by A-listers like Reese Witherspoon and sold at the legendary NYC department store Henri Bendel.
But cease and desist letters from the Hermès legal team soon swarmed the shops. By 2003, the bags were — in the words of Jelly Kelly owner and former reality star, Kristen Cavallari — “dunzo.”
The resurrection came thanks to K-pop star Kya, who toted a lime green Jelly Firkin in May. Teens in Asia pounced on the trend, and by June, Google was recording a 5000% spike in searches for the category.
“I first saw them online in April,” said Madison Hopkins, 26, a Bushwick resident who does the marketing for a Brooklyn coffee company. “But they seemed to only be available in Asia. I couldn’t figure out how to get one here.”
Last month, the bags finally made their way to the U.S. on TikTok Shop and Hopkins jumped on it. She paid $30 for her Jelly Firkin, which she said is “honestly better” than its Hermès inspiration. “It’s more whimsical. It’s not snobby, which makes it cooler.”
Even her non-fashion-obsessed co-workers love it. “They don’t know anything about fashion, but they’re like, ‘Why is your bag bouncing?’ They think it’s amazing.”
The Jelly Firkin craze comes as real Birkins are starting to lose their lustre.
A few years ago, some women would buy the hallowed purses in lieu of stocks and bonds, counting on their $20,000 hunk of leather to outpace inflation.
But author and fashion critic Amy Odell recently wrote in her Back Row newsletter, “It’s getting harder to view them as solid investments” because of market saturation, changing tastes and stealth competition from new designers at Chanel and Dior, both of whom have sparked frenzies for their own gotta-have purses.
Odell reports that “average Birkin prices have fallen roughly $2,500 on the resale market since January 2025.”
“I stopped buying Hermès altogether,” said one A-list fashion editor, who begged for anonymity because the French fashion house still sinks millions of ad dollars into the magazine they work for. “It doesn’t feel classic anymore. It feels like you’re trying to look super rich for trashy tech wives.”
It’s a far cry from the height of the haute status symbol, which has been name-dropped in raps by Jay-Z and Cardi B, used as a “Sex and the City” plot point, and sold at auction for over $10 million.
“Carrying a status bag right now feels like a humiliation ritual,” said Remy Solomon, a California filmmaker. “Like, you want me to pay money to haul around your logo? That’s domination. That’s a fetish. Take it to OnlyFans.”
In Washington Heights, Brittni Taylor’s $35 Jelly Firkin has turned her into a neighborhood celeb. “When I carry it, my friends will ask if they can take selfies with it,” the 25-year-old told The Post. “They think it’s so much cooler than a real one.”
“If you search ‘Jelly Firkin’ on TikTok, I think it’s almost gone now,” lamented Taylor. “I guess Hermès shut it down so fast! Now you have to search for ‘jelly bag’ and hope for the best.’”
Because of their clandestine popularity, Solomon admits she couldn’t even find a Jelly Firkin in Los Angeles. “I had to get mine through a friend, a vintage dealer in Paris,” she said.
Solomon admits the irony of buying a plastic dupe in the birthplace of the actual Hermès Birkin bag. “But this is so much chicer,” she said. “It’s like carrying a punchline.”
