Is it a bird? Or is it a bag? If your audience is asking that, you’re doing something right. Designers have brought us bags in the shape of animals, shoes, foods, and more through the years. There’ something to be said around culture’s obsession with weird bags. Here’s a roundup of the most insane bags we’ve seen on the runway.
The JW Anderson FW23 frog clutch
JW Anderson loves his animal-shaped clutches, and the frog was the FW23 edition. It opens its mouth like a real frog, how c*nt.
The Balenciaga Spring ’23 Lays bag
Demna Gvasalia is the king of irony fr. For the Spring ’23 Balenciaga show, which was presented at the New York Stock Exchange, he locked in with a Lays bag – the models held their crisp clutches scrunched, just like they would with an empty packet of crisps.
The Schiaparelli couture SS22 head bag
Modelled after CD Daniel Roseberry’s muse, legendary model Maggie Maurer, the gilded bag swung on the couture runway staring into our souls.
The Cassandra Verity Green real fish bowl bag from her CSM graduate show in 2013
For her CSM graduate show, student Cassandra Verity Green put a pet goldfish in a fish bowl bag and sent it down the runway. At the time, RSPCA voiced concerns for the fish, as it was being treated as a novelty and a “replaceable ornament” rather than a living creature.
The Undercover SS16 castle backpack
Undercover’s SS16 “Evil Clown” castle-shaped backpack, designed by Jun Takahashi, has become a rare, holy grail item among the fashion crowd, going up on Grailed for as high as $26,000. Would you cop?
The Moschino FW24 celery clutch
For FW24, Moschino ate. Along with a baguette bag (no, not a shoulder bag, but a baguette-shaped clutch), this celery clutch was sent down the runway in a Moschino paper bag (which, as you may have guessed, was also a clutch, and available for purchase).
The Chanel SS14 supermarket basket bag
Karl Lagerfeld’s famous ”Supermarket” collection is one of the best shows to this day, and it’s stayed in the fashion books, 11 years on. Presented at the Grand Palais in Paris, Lagerfeld built a Chanel superstore for its SS14 show, where models shopped for Coco Chanel Coco Pops, with their Chanel supermarket baskets. The basket bag is a limited edition grail item, hitting more than $100,000 on resale platforms (there’s one up on Farfetch rn).
The Thom Browne AW16 dog bag
The dog that launched a thousand bags, Thom Browne’s AW16 dog bag is one of the animals in his collection, the designer has an affinity for animal-shaped bags it seems, and
The Balenciaga Winter ’22 Le Cagole boot bag
Another Balenci bag bc we had to. For the Winter ’22 collection, Demna built a Le Cagole hybrid, repurposing leather boots. Iconic, icl.
The Louis Vuitton FW21 airplane bag
A Virgil Abloh special, the LV airplane bag is a tongue-in-cheek nod to LV’s luxury travel history of crafting trunks and suitcases. Only a few bags were crafted so this a holy grail, limited edition item, fr fr. Put your passport in the cockpit pocket, and take it on a trip.
The Valentino SS25 trippy cat bag
This cat-shaped bag from Valentino’s SS25 season is very Alice in Wonderland-coded. Alessandro Michele’s polka-dotted, bow-heavy first collection for the Italian house brought a handful of novelties on the runway, including deer brooches, mouth jewellery and this trippy cat clutch.
The JW Anderson FW22 pigeon clutch
The predecessor of the frog bag, the pigeon clutch was the OG. It’s petite but you can really pack it in, a lot of sh*t fits under its wing.
The Bottega Veneta SS25 trompe l’oeil shopping bag
Matthieu Blazy’s Bottega (we’re gonna miss him fr, even though we’re excited for his bright Chanel future) really said everything’s leather, even the plastic bags. His SS25 show had leather paper bags, leather bouquets, leather plastic bags. So Blazy coded (his trompe l’oeil denim-looking leather jeans of the previous season really opened a gate).
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