It’s a purse so small it barely registers to the naked eye — yet, it just sold for more than US$67,000.
The bag, bearing Louis Vuitton’s signature monogram and created by Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF, was sold in an online auction this week, more than quadrupling its $15,000 asking price.
“Smaller than a grain of sea salt and narrow enough to pass through the eye of a needle, this is a purse so small you’ll need a microscope to see it,” MSCHF said in a post about the bag. “There are big handbags, normal handbags, and small handbags, but this is the final word in bag miniaturization.”
Small purses are having a bit of a moment right now, but in the words of Derek Zoolander: “What is this? A handbag for ants?”
Called the Microscopic Handbag, the teeny-tiny bag measures just 657 by 222 by 700 micrometres and was crafted out of photopolymer resin. According to CNN, it was made using two-photon polymerization, which is a technology used to 3D-print micro-scale plastic parts.
It’s modelled after Louis Vuitton’s OnTheGo handbag, although MSCHF didn’t get permission from the luxury fashion house to create it.
“We are big in the ‘ask forgiveness, not permission‘ school,” Kevin Wiesner, MSCHF’s chief creative officer, told The New York Times earlier this month.
The bag, which comes with a microscope with a digital display so the buyer can actually enjoy and see their purchase, was sold on Joopiter, an online auction house founded by Louis Vuitton men’s designer Pharrell Williams.
“Pharrell loves big hats, so we made him an incredibly small bag,” Wiesner joked to the NYT.
MSCHF is no stranger to creating and selling strange objects that mock capitalism while also profiting from it. They were once sued by Nike for taking 666 pairs of Nike sneakers and modifying them with Satanic symbols and adding drops of real human blood.
The case was eventually settled out of court.
More recently, they destroyed four extremely expensive Birkin purses and turned them into sandals, which they called “Birkinstocks,” and sold them for as much as US$76,000 per pair.
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