A minuscule handbag measuring less than 0.03 inches wide just sold for over $63,000 at an online auction.
Barely visible to the human eye, the fluorescent yellowish-green bag is based on a popular Louis Vuitton design. The “Microscopic Handbag,” is by the Brooklyn-based group MSCHF who say the bag is small enough to pass through the eye of a needle and smaller than a grain of sea salt.
According to CNN,
The object was made using two-photon polymerization, a manufacturing technology used to 3D-print micro-scale plastic parts. It was sold alongside a microscope equipped with a digital display through which the bag can be viewed.
The sale was hosted by Joopiter online auction house which was founded by Pharrell Williams, Vuitton’s creative director of menswear, who just showed his first collection in Paris.
MSCHF’s chief creative officer Kevin Wiesner told the New York Times that they had not asked the French label’s permission,
Pharrell loves big hats, so we made him an incredibly small bag.”
MSCHF published a statement alongside the micro auction listing,
Previous small leather handbags have still required a hand to carry them — they become dysfunctional, inconveniences to their ‘wearer,’
‘Microscopic Handbag’ takes this to its full logical conclusion. A practical object is boiled down into jewelry, all of its putative function evaporated; for luxury objects, usability is the angels’ share.”
In 2021, MSCHF took apart up four Birkin handbags to create sandals (dubbed “Birkinstocks”) that it offered for up to $76,000 a pair and its cartoonish “Big Red Boots” became a viral sensation after being worn by Doja Cat and Janelle Monáe.
MSCHF, founded in 2016, was famously sued by Nike over its “Satan Shoes,” 666 pairs of modified sneakers featuring satanic symbols and drops of human blood.
(Photos, MSCHF, Louis Vuitton; via CNN)
