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Mschf, the makers of those big red boots and sneakers with blood in them, is no stranger to a controversial item release. Its latest drop, however, is not a polarizing shoe: It’s a handbag that takes the mini-bag trend to the next level. It’s so small it’s only slightly bigger than a crumb.
Called the Microscopic Handbag, Mschf’s itty-bitty bag is made of photopolymer resin that measures 657 by 222 by 700 micrometers. (For scale, that’s comparable to about a speck of dust.) The miniature bag is modeled after Louis Vuitton’s monogram OnTheGo handbag (however, Mschf reportedly did not get permission from the French house, so it’s not an official collaboration). Today, the bag sold at auction for $63,750 as part of the Just Phriends sale—an auction from Pharrell Williams’s auction house, Joopiter, which ran from June 19 to June 27.
Sound like a silly investment? Maybe it helps to know that the bag is more of an art piece than a wearable accessory. The brand released the item as a statement on luxury bags and the extremes people will go to wear them (whether that’s rocking huge or mini versions of them). “As a once-functional object like a handbag becomes smaller and smaller, its object status becomes steadily more abstracted until it is purely a brand signifier,” the brand said in a release. “Previous small leather handbags have still required a hand to carry them—they become dysfunctional, inconveniences to their wearer.”
Earlier this month, the bag was also displayed in a sealed gel case and pre-mounted beneath a microscope, on public view at the 8 Avenue Matignon gallery in Paris from June 20 to June 24.
This isn’t the first buzzy handbag Mschf has released. Last year, it created a black Mschf logo handbag that was manufactured in Italy, Texas—a cheeky take on the made-in-Italy label that many designer handbags often feature. (That one, however, was regular-people size—not something too small for Barbie.) Say what you want about the brand’s divisive releases, but one thing is for sure: They always get you talking.
