Musings on the €1 million bag

Photo by Julie Ricard on Unsplash. Image shows a brick wall with the message, ‘Until Debt, Tear Us Apart, graffiti on.

by Meg Pirie

The news of Pharrell William’s Louis Vuitton $1 million bag dubbed ‘Millionaire Speedy’ has gone viral.

Sold via a made-to-order basis, the newly released bag, replaces the generally used cotton canvas for crocodile leather, embellished with gold hardware and diamonds.

Pharrell was spotted at Paris Fashion Week recently donning a yellow version of the bag. Pharrell was appointed Creative Director in February 2023, and this direction nods to a louder trajectory than even the late Creative Director Virgil Abloh’s street influences for Louis Vuitton.

The press has been split since news of the bag surfaced, from excitement to criticism and offers an antithesis to ‘quiet luxury’, something which in fact might be labelled as ‘loud luxury’.

After all, the most classic of all handbags, arguably the 2.11 Chanel handbag created by the late Karl Lagerfeld upon his arrival at the house in 1983, which comes in a multitude of colours and gold metal chain, comes in at around £8,530. For a vegan alternative, Stella McCartney offers the Falabella Fold-Over Tote Bag with waxed GOTS-certified organic cotton lacing for £925. Or the trending half-moon The Row handbag can be found second-hand for £1,123.50 over at Vestiaire Collective.

From a social perspective, the kind of luxury denoted by the ‘Millionaire Speedy’ bag is by default prohibitive to the majority, but an elite 1%. In a cost-of-living crisis where many are choosing between food, heating and/or paying their rent or mortgages, is this bag in fact, very out of touch?

The other thread to this is the climate crisis. As many in the sector are preparing for COP28 later this month, how might a $1 million bag juxtapose the message that urgency is required for climate mitigation and how might this money have be spent in that regard?

There is also the ethical implications of using crocodile skin. PETA’s US Senior Vice President, Lisa Lange, sent an open letter to Pharrell, inviting the Creative Director to attend:

“We’d like to invite you on a less-than-luxurious tour of a filthy (for that’s what they are) crocodile factory farm with us to see the living origins of your “Millionaire” bag. […]. Killing wildlife for a bag isn’t cool—it’s cold. Are you up for this trip?”

Musing on this bag, has only created more questions. What do you think?

Have your say here.