April 21, 2026·Aesthetic Study
Illusion bags
Fashion is making purses shaped like apples, chips, and croissants, and the gimmick works by making you look twice.
The bag-as-object gag has proven surprisingly resilient. We stopped asking “is it cake?” long ago, but luxury fashion keeps circling back to purses that look like other things. Moschino just dropped a leather apple bag, a celery purse, a watermelon clutch, and a bleach bottle. JW Anderson has the pigeon clutch and a Victoria sponge slice. Balenciaga turned a Lays chip bag and a coffee cup into four-figure leather goods. Rihanna carried a Fendi crossbody shaped like an actual loaf of bread to dinner at Carbone. Dauphinette made croissant bags out of real surplus bakery bread, coated in antifungal resin.
The trend reigns because it’s more than just a gimmick. In a market dominated by quiet luxury and indistinguishable leathers, a pigeon clutch is instantly recognizable. In a culture where everything is content, an apple bag photographs itself. And in a moment when everything feels a bit too serious, carrying a broccoli purse is the most disarming thing you can do. The object bag dominates because it makes you look twice at an everyday object. Which is, when you think about it, what fashion is supposed to do.
- Highsnobiety’s full history of designer novelty bags
- A psychologist explains the appeal of novelty bags
- Fun bag godmother Judith Leiber’s full crystal minaudière archive
- The handbags that might trend next
