How Jane's Birkin bag idea took off ... THE STORY of Jane's airplane disaster ...

As we are showing you tonight our visit to the 'Leather Forever' Hermes Exhibit, we bought you should know a bit more about the 'it' girl that Was Dumas inspiration ... meet JANE BIRKIN :

She said: "I remember it well. I'd been upgraded by Air France on a flight to London, and was sitting next to a man. I'm not quite sure what type of bag I had with me - my husband, Jacques Doillon, had reversed his car over my basket, crushed it on purpose not two days before. Little did he know that on this airplane journey, when everything fell out of whatever bag I had, the man next to me said: 'You should have one with pockets'. I said: 'The day Hermès make one with pockets I will have that', and he said: 'But I am Hermès and I will put pockets in for you'."

Her fellow passenger was in fact Jean-Louis Dumas, the chief executive of Hermès. Together they began designing. "I said, 'Why don't you make a handbag that is bigger than the Kelly but smaller than Serge's suitcase?'. And he said, 'Well, what would it be like?' And I think I drew it on the sickbag - or the not-be-sick bag. And he said, 'I'll make it for you'."