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Gone are the days of spending just 5 cents for a paper bag from the grocery store — this one will cost you $2,500. Produce Paper Bags With Handles
Earlier this year, Bottega Veneta released its “Raw Paper Leather Top-Handle Bag,” a purse that looks identical to a paper grocery bag with a hefty price tag of $1,900 for the small bag and $2,500 for the medium size.
Apparently, spending thousands of dollars on a handbag that looks identical to the ones given out at any grocery store is all part of a new celebrity-embraced trend that Nylon mag called “errand-core.”
Bottega Veneta first debuted its raw paper leather bag in the Pre-Fall 2023 collection earlier this year and brought it back this past weekend for the Pre-Spring 2024 show starring A$AP Rocky.
And Bottega Veneta isn’t the only fashion house going all-in on the brown paper bag.
Balenciaga’s Fall 2024 show in Los Angeles on Saturday showcased this trend on a residential street in the Hancock Park neighborhood.
Kim Kardashian arrived at the show in classic LA style, carrying a paper bag from Erewhon, the celebrity-loved, infamously expensive grocery store and cafe dedicated to healthy, organic foods.
It appeared as though the 43-year-old TV personality had just come from running her errands — but then the presentation began, and models came down the runway holding on to their to-go lattes and carrying the same grocery bag.
This comes as part of Balenciaga’s collaboration with the upscale grocery store, a series of pricey clothes and accessories donned with the Erewhon Los Angeles branding.
Already on sale for the Balenciaga x Erewhon collaboration is a zip-up hoodie ($1,150), an oversized T-shirt ($725), aprons ($550), a cap ($450) and a black tote bag ($425).
At the show, Demna, the long-time creative director of Balenciaga who goes by his first name only, apparently asked Kardashian to carry the paper Erewhon grocery bag.
“This is my purse for today, this is what Demna wanted me to carry, a little Erewhon Balenciaga bag with flowers, so I’m going to give him the flowers when it’s done,” she told WWD.
As for why everyone wants to don “Errand Core,” fashion critic Rian Phin shared the photos on X (formerly Twitter) of the Bottega Veneta shoot with A$AP Rocky, explaining that the trend is a “projection / a hologram of reality.”
high fashion and depending on the semblance of reality pic.twitter.com/qd7lDeTIK7
“High fashion and depending on the semblance of reality,” Phin wrote. “It’s like the paparazzi product placement of the mid-2000s where it-items, especially bags, were established through the paparazzi’s lens.”
Brown Paper Handle Bags Designer brands may be trying to turn normal and mundane activities into an opportunity for luxury fashion, but presumably us “regular people” will still opt to pay less than a dollar for our brown paper bags.