Following Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar's assassination last week, fashion critics are focusing on his widow, who was seen entering the tunnels on October 6, hours before the October 7 massacre, with what looks like a luxurious bag brand that few can afford.
Arabic IDF Spokesperson COL Avichay Adraee published a defiant tweet on Saturday saying Sinwar's wife, Samar Muhammad Abu Zamar, appears next to her husband with a Hermes Birkin bag, one day before the October 7 massacre. "Did Sinwar's wife go into the tunnel with him on October 6, carrying a bag which costs about 32,000 dollars?! I leave the answer to you," Col. Adraee wrote.
Is it really a Birkin bag? Stylist Liat Ashory thinks so. "I'm sure that Sinwar's wife has an authentic bag. If it was someone on the street in Turkey, I would think she bought a fake, but here, there's no way she would take a knockoff. Anything she would get would have to be a special delivery and it doesn't seem likely to me."
Israeli businesswoman and singer Nicole Reidman, on the other hand, thinks it's a knockoff. She called Samar's questionable bag, garbage. "I'm an ambassador for Hermes, I'm invited to store openings all over the world and invited to shows so I know everything about the brand. Sinwar's wife's bag, in my opinion, is not a Hermès. To me it looks like just trash. The handles, the folding of the sides of the bag, there's fabric sticking out, all this shows that it is not a Hermes."
To purchase the bag, named after the actress Jane Birkin, one must have significant connections in Hermes. Otherwise, anyone wanting the bag is put on a long waiting list and must prove to be a loyal customer of the company's products such as scarves, leather goods and household items, having already spent tens of thousands of dollars.
"Hermes bags cannot be purchased in stores in Israel," Reidman explained. "Even if you have a million dollars, you can't go into a store and leave with a bag. You must register and be a regular customer. Unless you're very famous like Beyoncé and Kim Kardashian, and even then, you are limited to to one bag a year. I don't see how Sinwar's wife can be a regular customer, but maybe [slain Hamas political leader] Ismail Haniyeh bought the bag in Qatar and gave it to her as a gift. I'm sure it's a fake, which costs about 300 dollars."
"The Hermes bags are very expensive, there is no way that a woman who is not from the upper class It is a status symbol," Ashory said. "They cost a minimum of $4,000 and can reach $12,000. Even if you find a model with a manufacturing defect, like scratches, the price never drops below $2,500. A Hermes fake is also considered expensive for average people because it is a hard bag to forge. If a knockoff is especially convincing, then it would cost no less than $200 per bag."
Reidman, a fan of the brand, was shocked by the thought that the killer's wife possessed it. "I brought Hermès in Israel, I used to wear these bags when no one knew what they were. Today, everyone has a bag from Turkey. All the girls in Israel, except for myself and maybe three or four other women, have fakes.
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