Let’s talk about designer bags. Often the eventual product is not exactly what the designer has designed. During production, the factory does exercise some creative freedom to fill in details that the designer may have overlooked. This is known as hidden creative labor as MSCHF, the Brooklyn-based American art collective explains:
“Anyone seriously engaged with manufacturing understands the factory is not a computer, taking in perfect instructions and outputting perfect execution. The factory performs tremendous amounts of invisible creative labor. It is found in processes, mechanisms, or techniques that succeed when they cannot be spotted by the end consumer. It is creativity only evident, for example, in the way you cannot see a parting line. It happens in places where the designer doesn’t even know to provide instructions.”
I know, right? I did not even give a thought to this, so it is kind of a revelation. It is like just realizing a group of people have been taking shifts to ensure we have electric, gas, and water supply round the clock. We know the organizations behind it but we often forget the hands that made everything run like a clockwork.
Anyhoo, exploring this lesser-known “secret” of the global supply chain, MSCHF has asked a factory in Peru to knock off a Birkin. It then told a factory in Portugal to mash that up with a Celine bag before proceeding to request a factory in India to combine that mash-up with a Dior bag. Finally, MSCHF had a factory in China merge the result with a Balenciaga bag.
The result is a hybrid luxury handbag designed entirely by cumulative factory labor in which no designers were involved. The handbag, aptly called the Global Supply Chain Telephone Handbag, is weirdly alluring. It has an aesthetic that feels right at home with seemingly weird fashion pieces we saw on the runway in recent years.
I don’t know if it’s only me but I felt like this bag could be part of the surreal painting The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali. It could also make the perfect handbag for The Scream by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch.
The Global Supply Chain Telephone Handbag will drop on February 21, 2024, at 2 PM ET in 4 colors. Supplies are limited. So if you want one, be sure to sign up to be notified when it becomes available. The price is undisclosed though.
Images: MSCHF.
