If you were scandalized by the price of The Row’s original Alligator Backpack when it launched, you may want to sit down for this news. As we all know, a great way to increase anything’s asking price is to get a very name-y artist involved, and that’s exactly what The Row has done – the brand tapped notorious contemporary artist Damien Hirst for a line of $55,000 custom backpacks, including the pharmaceutical-embellished alligator creation you see above. I hope the bag comes with a couple real Xanax, because you might find yourself in need of some medically induced serenity when you receive the bill.
The bag is a part of a line of nine embellished alligator backpacks, all of which cost $55,000 and are available for order at Just One Eye. A portion of the proceeds is intended for UNICEF, which is nice, but Refinery29 reports that the amount of the donation is at Hirst’s discretion and will apparently not be made public, so I hope UNICEF isn’t holding its collective breath in anticipation of a windfall. You can check out a couple more of the bags and the collaboration’s video below.
Hirst is an artist with a broad and ardent following, so his involvement in this collection likely means that the items will move quickly to collectors and art world glitterati, and perhaps to fashion obsessives with huge budgets who pride themselves on having everything that is ridiculous. And really, there’s no other way to describe what’s going on here.
