Louis Vuitton Puts Luxury Novelty Bags Back on the Radar With $10,000 Lifebuoy Purse
Designed with the French luxury fashion house's signature craft, the bag was teased by guests at the Louis Vuitton men's spring 2026 show in Paris in June. Featuring its iconic logo on the leather canvas material, the bag is now listed on the brand's website as 'Notify Me' with a retail price of $10,000.
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Despite the unique circular design, the bag is functional, featuring three separate zipped compartments and an adjustable leather strap for shoulder or cross-body carry. The accessory is already catching the attention of social media.
This is not the first time the French house has had a novelty purse making waves online. In 2021, Louis Vuitton debuted a viral airplane bag, created by the late Virgil Abloh, which retailed for roughly $39,000. Other entries into the brand's novelty bag list include the LV Fan bag, from the spring 2025 runway, the LV Monogram LV Paint Can Bag and the LV x Yayoi Kusama Pumpkin Shoulder Bag.
Over the course of the last several seasons, luxury brands have released a selection of novelty bags that stand out for their playful and unconventional designs. Notable examples include Moschino's Teddy Bear purse, Balenciaga's trash bag and Loewe's tomato clutch.
'There's been always a pendulum on what rises and falls and swings and sways,' said Susan Korn, designer of accessories label Susan Alexandra, about the trend in an interview with WWD in August 2024. 'In the past couple of years we've seen there's been this return to a very serious suit dressing — like neutral suit dressing, the vest as a shirt and the return to the traditional black bag. On the other end of the spectrum, you have a really fun, ridiculous, outrageous, not so serious bag. When you go too far in one direction, you always want to go to the other.'
Prior to the 2024 resurgence of novelty bags, signs of the trend's rise were evident in 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In February 2020, novelty handbags were spotted at the Fame and Moda trade shows in New York City. Heather London, a sales rep for Mary Frances Accessories, noted how the trend was making a comeback at the time.
'You're seeing it on the runway; you're seeing it with the major designers,' London told WWD in February 2020. 'It trickles down and it just keeps getting more and more popular.'
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Forbes
14 hours ago
- Forbes
Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter Is Rewriting American Culture — And Boosting The Economy
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But it has left more than just cowboy boots and hats behind. In every city it touched, the economic glow still lingers. In a time of seismic shifts in the marketplace and the political landscape, Knowles-Carter has become more than a cultural icon—she's an economic force. With Cowboy Carter, the Grammy-winning artist isn't just reclaiming country music's Black historic roots, she's staking a bold claim on American identity itself, all wrapped in the American flag. It's a masterclass in ownership, scarcity, and cultural disruption—with real implications for micro- and macro-economics nationwide. As cities see real economic impact from Beyoncé's presence, cultural economist Thomas Smith argues her tour is a lesson in modern market behavior, civic stimulus, and the future of 'event economics' in divided times. 'Beyonce coming to town gets everyone riled up, and for cities that means folks converge on areas around the stadium and spend bunches of money,' Smith said. 'This makes her concert more than just entertainment, she's an economic event.' LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 02: Beyoncé accepts the Best Country Album award for "COWBOY ... More CARTER" onstage during the 67th Annual GRAMMY Awards at Arena on February 02, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo byfor The Recording Academy) While her work has drawn fierce criticism from the same forces intent on dragging America back to a time when artists were expected to sing, dance, and stay silent about politics, Knowles-Carter has transcended the noise. Thanks to a loyal fan base and her unapologetic embrace of every facet of her identity—mother, daughter, Black woman, global citizen, and soundtrack supplier for the resistance—she remains a cultural force. Knowles-Carter's voice became even more pronounced with the 2016 release of Lemonade, her sixth studio album, which featured the single 'Formation.' 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In 2022, while speaking with Leo Weekly, Royster delved deeply into the history and politics of country music. 'This genre was founded on a kind of logic of segregation,' Royster told Leo Weekly. 'In the 1920s when the genre was kind of invented more or less by talent scouts and record label labels, they were distinguishing hillbilly music as kind of a white music that was meant for white audiences, and 'race' music, you know, blues, rhythm and blues, and jazz for Black audiences.' Reimagining rural America and redefining 'Americanism' beyond the white-centered lens it's so often framed in, the Cowboy Carter tour and album offer audiences a striking new association with the American flag—one draped across the body of a Black woman. The Cowboy Carter Tour's DC stop happened over 4th of July weekend in Landover, MD. While the album isn't explicitly partisan, its iconography subtly reshapes national identity. It points to an America—and a broader Western Hemisphere—built on the backs of Black labor, inspired by Black innovation, and powered by Black ingenuity. When Beyoncé rolled into Houston's NRG Stadium on June 28 and 29, her hometown got more than it bargained and budgeted for. According to Axios, hotels near the stadium hit 79 percent occupancy -- a sharp increase from 61 percent the prior year, OpenTable reported a 43 percent increase in Houston-area reservations over that three-day period compared to the same stretch last year. Beyoncé's economic impact extended well beyond Texas. During her stop in the nation's capital over Fourth of July weekend, restaurants surrounding Northwest Stadium (formerly Fedex Field) in Landover, Maryland saw nightly profit spikes of $15,000 to $20,000. All gains that Tom Smith described as beneficial for local economics. 'You gotta have the boots, you gotta have the shirt, you gotta have the hat,' said Smith, an economist at Emory University. 'You gotta have all the things. It's not even worth—it's not even worth going if you don't have all the things making the concert an economic driver for local business in the region.' Beyond uplifting local business, Smith, a bass guitar player himself, also emphasized the broader importance of the tour economy as a catalyst for the industries that power live entertainment. That includes stagecrafters, electrical engineers, lighting designers, dancers, musicians, publicists, costume designers, and the full teams that support them. 'A lot of those jobs were decimated during the COVID-19 pandemic, when no one was going on tour,' Smith said. 'And now, these big, mammoth tours, these big stadium tours are spending millions of dollars every night on the people that make sure that the sound and the lights and the ancillary element are working.' SYDNEY COLEMAN (L) and JESSICA HANNAH (R) traveled from Houston, TX. Fans of Beyonce queue to enter ... More SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles on April 28, 2025 to watch her first concert of her newTour named "Cowboy Carter." (Photo by Bexx Francois/For The Washington Post via Getty Images) Cowboy Carter is Beyoncé's second U.S. tour since the pandemic. And while it's most definitely different in tone, the financial punch for America's big cities remains the same. It couldn't come at a more convenient time, either, as cities across the country are seeing a decrease in crime and are searching for new sources of revenue amid a cavalcade of budget cuts from Washington, D.C. As Beyoncé's golden horse, floating horseshoe, and many of her now-iconic Cowboy Carter costumes make their way to the storage units, it's likely her economic impact — not just her spectacle — that cities and states will remember. Beyoncé's name was never on the ballot. She never passed a bill or rage-tweeted on X. And yet, her version of disruption has managed to move both culture and the economy. In her song 'American Requiem,' Knowles-Carter asks listeners to confront the complex and often painful history of race and culture in America. It's a counter narrative to today's political moment, one that treats historical truth as a liability. Through it all, Beyoncé may be proving something radically different: that reckoning with the past isn't just necessary, it might also be profitable.
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15 hours ago
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Cooked: Celebrated Chef exits new venture after allegedly balking at free food for influencer because she wasn't famous enough
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