Hermès Birkin vs Kelly: Every Size Tier, Handle Drop and Strap Drop

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Choose the Birkin for two top handles and no shoulder strap — it is carried in the hand or on the forearm at every tier. Choose the Kelly for one top handle plus a detachable leather strap, which is what makes it a shoulder or crossbody bag. On the published figures a Birkin 30 is 30 × 22 × 16 cm and a Kelly 28 is 28 × 22 × 10 cm, so at nearly the same footprint the Birkin is 6 cm deeper, and the Kelly is the only one of the two that leaves your hands free.

Choose the Birkin for two top handles and no shoulder strap — it is carried in the hand or on the forearm at every tier. Choose the Kelly for one top handle plus a detachable leather strap, which is what makes it a shoulder or crossbody bag. On the published figures a Birkin 30 is 30 × 22 × 16 cm and a Kelly 28 is 28 × 22 × 10 cm, so at nearly the same footprint the Birkin is 6 cm deeper, and the Kelly is the only one of the two that leaves your hands free.

Both bags are hand-built one at a time in France, they share the same closure parts — two slim sangles that run from the back of the bag to the front and fasten over a single central touret — and they share the padlock, the clochette that holds the keys, and four studded feet on the base. Because the parts are the same, the difference between a Birkin and a Kelly is not a matter of finish or hardware quality. It is the handle, and the handle is decided before you look at a single measurement.

One handle or two decides this before any measurement does

The Birkin is a two-handle bag with no strap. That single fact rules out shoulder and crossbody carry for every tier in the ladder, and it is why the published drops on a Birkin are handle drops rather than strap drops. The Kelly adds a D-ring where the handle meets the bag, and a matching detachable leather strap hangs from it — listed as both adjustable and removable — so the same body shape can be carried three ways.

There is one visual consequence worth knowing before you compare photographs. On the Birkin the front face carries two metal brackets, the pontets, which the sangles pass through; they are a Birkin-only part. On the Kelly those brackets are absent, and a D-ring sits at the handle root instead. Two brackets and two handles means Birkin; one handle, a D-ring and a strap means Kelly. That is the check that survives a bad photo.

Once the family is settled, the two ladders line up by width and the depth column does the rest of the work. A Birkin 25 is 25 × 19 × 13 cm and a Kelly 25 is 25 × 19 × 9 cm. A Birkin 30 is 30 × 22 × 16 cm; the nearest Kelly tiers are the 28 at 28 × 22 × 10 cm and the 32 at 32 × 23 × 10.5 cm. A Birkin 35 is 35 × 25 × 18 cm against a Kelly 35 at 35 × 24 × 12 cm, and a Birkin 40 is 40 × 30 × 20 cm against a Kelly 40 at 40 × 28 × 15 cm. In inches the same pairs read 9.8 × 7.5 × 5.1 against 9.8 × 7.5 × 3.5 at 25 cm. The Kelly also fills the 28 cm step, which the four standard Birkin tiers 25, 30, 35 and 40 leave empty.

The Birkin ladder in centimetres and inches

SACLÀB states the naming rule directly: a Birkin 30 measures 30 cm across its base, and the collection has four standard tiers, 25, 30, 35 and 40, spaced 5 cm apart. Every other row above is a documented variant rather than a standard size, and the width column is the one figure that the sources agree on everywhere.

The 20 cm tier appears in the published tier lists as the smallest Birkin — SACLÀB calls it the Birkin 20, also referred to as the Mini Birkin or Baby Birkin — and the dimensions above come from a single table that gives it as 8 × 6.5 × 4.5 in. Because only one publisher prints a width, height and depth for it, treat the 20 as a confirmed tier with a thinner measurement record than the four standard ones.

Two steps of that ladder carry the warmest search demand and now have their own pages: the Birkin 25 against the 30 and the Birkin 30 against the 35. Both read the same table above as their only source, so the centimetres on them equal the centimetres here, tier for tier.

The Kelly ladder, tier by tier

The Kelly is the longer ladder of the two: it fills the gap between 20 and 30 that the Birkin leaves empty, then continues past it. The Kelly 40 and 50 are the two tiers most often left out of guides — the 40 is described as still in production but rarely made, and the 50 appears on one publisher’s table only, which is worth remembering when a listing for either turns up.

The two Kelly tiers buyers weigh most often are the 25 and the 28, and they are set side by side on the Hermès Kelly 25 vs 28 page, together with the two figure sets each tier carries. That page prints both published sets rather than averaging them, exactly as the table above does.

Two figure sets circulate for the Kelly 25, 28 and 32

This is the part of the comparison that a single number would hide. For three consecutive Kelly tiers, two groups of publishers print figures that differ by about 1 cm, and they do it consistently rather than randomly:

A third set of figures is published in inches and lands closer to the first column, which is the useful tie-breaker rather than a third opinion: the Kelly 25 is listed at 9.8 × 7.5 × 3.5 in, which converts to roughly 25 × 19 × 9 cm.

The figures printed in the ladder table above are the first column, for a plain reason: they are the ones this site’s Kelly reference uses, and two pages of the same site giving two different heights for the same bag is worse than one of them being 1 cm out. That does not make the second column wrong — it is a different measurement of the same bag, most likely taken with or without the flap and handle contributing to the height. If you are matching a listing to a published figure, ask which number the listing is quoting and measure the piece the same way.

Why “Birkin 40”, “HAC 40” and “Kelly 40” are three different bags

The number in the name is the width, so three bags that are all 40 cm wide can be three completely different objects:

The HAC 40 is 8 cm taller than the Birkin 40 in the same width class, because HAC stands for Haut à Courroies — the high-handled travel shape that the Birkin was derived from — and it is a different lineage rather than a large Birkin. The Kelly 40 is the same width again but 5 cm shallower than the Birkin 40 and the only one of the three with a detachable strap. If a listing, a photo caption or a message says only “40”, the height is the question to ask, not the width.

Strap drop on a Kelly does not grow with the size

The Kelly’s strap is a separate part, and the published drops do not track the body size at all: 48 cm on the 20, 42 cm on the 25, 44.5 cm on the 28, 43 cm on both the 32 and the 35, then down to 34.3 cm on the 40 before going back up to 48.1 cm on the 50.

Two practical points follow. First, the strap is interchangeable in length terms, so a long drop on a small Kelly is not evidence of a mismatched part — the family does ship short and long straps against the same tier. Second, the Kelly 40 figure shows why a strap is described rather than inferred: at 40 cm wide it is the largest of the mid-ladder bodies and it carries the shortest strap drop published anywhere in the family. Never estimate a strap from the size number or from a photograph.

Sellier, Retourne and the choice the Birkin does not offer

The Kelly comes in two constructions and they are not interchangeable. Sellier is built rigid with clean, sharp lines and visible outward-facing edges, sealed with resin. Retourne starts the same way and is then turned inside out — the name means reversed — so the seams are covered by rolled leather and the bag reads softer and more relaxed.

The leather follows the construction rather than your preference. Sellier takes the harder, more boardy hides such as Epsom or Box to hold the panel shape. Retourne takes softer hides such as Togo or Clemence, which is why a Retourne of the same stated size swallows a little more and slouches over time.

Sizes are not equally available across the two. The Kelly 20 is made in Sellier only. The Kelly 25, 28, 32 and 35 are made in both. On the Birkin side, both constructions have existed but the Birkin Sellier is discontinued, so the choice that a Kelly buyer makes at purchase is effectively a salvage hunt for a Birkin buyer today.

What each tier closes over

Published dimensions tell you the box; they do not tell you whether the flap will lie flat once the bag is loaded. The pattern across both ladders is that depth decides this, not width.

The pattern is consistent enough to use as a rule of thumb: at the same width, the Birkin carries roughly 6 to 7 cm more depth than the Kelly, and that is the figure that decides whether a loaded bag still closes.

Reading a listing photo: four checks before you ask for a measurement

Photos are good at assigning a bag to a family and almost useless at assigning it a size, so work in that order.

1. Count the handles and look for the strap. Two handles, no D-ring, two pontet brackets on the front: Birkin. One handle with a D-ring at its root and a detachable strap: Kelly.
2. Look at the base. Four studded feet on both models, so feet do not separate them — but a Pochette-style clutch has a top handle and no feet at all, which is a different lineage rather than a small Kelly.
3. Look at the front edges on a Kelly. A crisp, visible, resin-sealed seam means Sellier; a rolled, covered edge means Retourne.
4. Only then ask for a number, and ask for the width with the bag resting flat, the height of the body alone, the depth, and the handle drop measured from the top of the handle to the top of the body.

What no photo can establish is which figure set a seller is quoting, or whether the height they give includes the handle. Two sellers can both be reading from published tables and still describe the same Kelly 25 as 19 cm or 18 cm tall. Asking which number they used, and measuring the same way, is the step that prevents the mismatch.

Sources for the Birkin and Kelly figures on this page

Figures on this page were checked on 26 September 2026 against the tables above. Where two publishers give different numbers for the same tier, both are printed rather than averaged, and the differences are named in the section on the two Kelly figure sets.

Tell us which tier you are comparing on WhatsApp with the model or a screenshot, and we will send current album photos and confirm the size, the leather, the hardware finish and the options in front of us before you commit. Open a WhatsApp chat with the tier you are weighing, or browse the Hermès bag gallery for current photos, compare the two closest tiers on the Kelly 25 vs 28 page, or open the Bags Catalog to see every brand album.

For the published dimensions of the mid-ladder Kelly in a single page, the Hermès Kelly 25 model reference lists the recorded size and the silhouette details, and the Mini Kelly size guide covers the 20 cm tier on its own.

Every Birkin, HAC and Kelly row from the tables above is in the Luxury Bag Size Index, including both published Kelly sets, which stay side by side rather than averaged.