Why Do We Love to See Designer Bags Destroyed?

“I love her, but um… she’s been through a lot…” reveals Julia Fox hesitantly in a 2022 TikTok, “That’s a little hard to see there, but she was actually attacked by a machete. I’m not kidding, that actually happened. To this bag,” she deadpans, “And me.” She then proceeds to display more scratches, picking and prodding at the slit and slashed grey Birkin with her delicate, long, translucent nails, like it’s a crime scene unfolding.

No additional context whatsoever.

There’s a vaguely Lynchian quality to the whole thing.

In her latest Substack, fellow Julia-stan Charli XCX dives into what makes Julia so, well, Julia (and in case you missed it last year, her album-opener for brat, 360, features the lyric “I’m everywhere, I’m so Julia”).

“So yes, she’s everywhere, but she’s everywhere for a certain crowd. She is not Target or Amazon or McDonald’s,” before following it up with, “But if Julia Fox did have a custom McDonald’s meal and a clothing line with Target and little Julia drones were delivering everyone’s Amazon packages, would this mass exposure make Julia Fox uncool? I honestly don’t think so because I’m sure she’d find a Warholian way to make it all make sense.”

But is it simply Fox’s inherent cool that makes her machete-maimed Birkin look so much cooler? Or do we as a culture collectively enjoy designer bags being defiled, dishonored, and desecrated?

The Birkin Does the Workin’

Now, Fox hails from a long line of pop-culturistas who have famously dragged their detritus-slathered purses into grossdom.

Mary-Kate Olsen notoriously paired her ultra-worn Kelly universally with just about everything, from red-carpet gown moments to fur coat-clad Starbucks runs. Liana Satenstein wrote, “Though the bag costs upwards of $10,000, (£7,000), she treats it like the overstuffed briefcase of a used-car salesman.”

And every fashionista by now has memorized the lore about that wine-splotched seafoam green BBag that Olsen has carried to every bicoastal crevice, immortalized in that famous W Magazine profile: “The version she’s carrying today was originally mint green, but it’s so dingy, covered with stains, pen marks and even a chewed-up piece of gum, that it looks almost gray.”

In more Hermès news, Carolyn-Bessette’s beaten-up Birkin has such cult-status that even Ryan Murphy was ostracized for its incorrect on-screen depiction, Candice Bergen uses hers as a painting canvas, Manhattan art director Ryan Reineck swears by his “messed up” Haut à Courroies, and the same model from the late André Leon Talley’s collection sold for over $32,000 via Christie’s. Yet, none compares to the OG, the woman who made the bag.

“On my obituary,” Jane Birkin told Anthony Mason on CBS Sunday Mornings, “it will say, ‘Like the bag.’” Five years after the fateful Air France flight that led to its inception, she would proceed to dump its contents – the same one that fetched $10.1 million at a Sotheby’s auction last year – in front of Agnès Varda, offering with her characteristic mischievous smile, “When you show it all, you reveal very little.” “There’s no fun in a bag if it’s not kicked around, so that it looks as if the cat’s been sitting on it – and it usually has,” she later told Vogue. “The cat may even be in it!”

It was personal style at its finest.

On Shabby-Chic and Schadenfreude

So, these women used their bags. Big whoop, what’s so great about that?

Well, part of it is aspirational porn – we’re too used to seeing our prized purses delicately unboxed, so quiet you can hear the crinkle of tissue paper, the chime of tags dangling, the whiff of fresh leather emanating from the screen. It’s perfection packaged within 4K pixels, and unpackaged so delicately with glove-encased hands, it’s as if Zazu is presenting Simba to the world.

Thus, seeing it brandished around in utter nonchalance – when we ourselves are so used to clutching onto them like Fabergé eggs – might feel shocking.

But on the flip-side, there’s content that takes this to the other logical extreme – one woman’s treasure, after all, is another’s trash. There was Clint Eastwood’s daughter, Francesca Eastwood, who shot a series of provocative portraits along with boyfriend Tyler Shields, featuring a (thankfully, counterfeit) blazing fire-truck red croc Birkin being chewed on, sawed in half, and ultimately, literally set ablaze. E! News headlines at the time touting the bag a “$100,000 Hermès Crocodile Birkin” sent industry insiders hobbling away in horror clutching at their pearls.

Then there’s Volkan Yilmaz, who “tears into, peels, scratches, and rubs acetone on various panels of a bag with an enthusiasm that looks like schadenfreude,” writes The Nod Magazine. Better known as Tanner Leatherstein across social media, you probably have seen his videos, pulling apart the Insta-famous candy-colored Jacquemus or stabbing into the quilting on Chanel – all to answer that singular salient question: “Is it worth it?”

So, dig deeper, and perhaps this (strangely satisfying) display of destruction and desecration isn’t a voyeuristic exercise after all.

Perhaps it’s really a crowd-sourced quality test; how much of that “heritage craftsmanship” stands true under the microscope? Or could it be our own convoluted way of achieving some sense of fairness, having shelled out four figures on a less-than-satisfactory purchase? Take your pick.

Embracing the Mess

We’ve all been there: we get our first designer piece, we baby it as much as we can: separate dust bag, no sharp keys, no leaky pens. Heck, I even carried around a waterproof pouch so the rain wouldn’t harm my precious PS1.

Until, of course, the unthinkable happens.

You get caught in the midst of a surprise drizzle. Or an unsuspecting imbecile decides to spill something on your treasure that will almost definitely leave a mark. Or your favorite pair of jeans leaves its nasty blemish. And bam! Your pristine new (or new to you) purchase ruined. You panic; you buff and rub away at the leather until your manicure wears off, but the stain doesn’t.

And then? Strangely enough, there’s a sense of relief. You realize that it’s only a bag, and it’s meant to be used.

Founder of Paris-based Paradise Garage, Estelle Chemouny, cites her most worn handbag as a beat-up chocolate brown Kelly purchased at auction for about 700 euros (“Apparently, no one else wanted it.”) “That bag has a vibe,” she says of the “destroyed” silhouette. “It makes everything look cooler.” A scandalizing New York Times piece from 2023 wrote of the Birkin: “Real Housewives have closets full and that has a kind of tacky look.”

At Paris Fashion Week, Matthieu Blazy’s debut collection for Chanel featured the iconic 2.55 in a distorted, disordered frame. At the same time, other brands like Coach, Balenciaga, and Acne Studios have made the “loved leather” look – typically reserved for regular wear and tear – a recurring part of their brand ethos.

And the most affirming trend? Even Marie Kondo, the professional organizer who’d formerly launched the tidying and minimizing revolution, has now come to embrace the various messes and imperfections of life.

Because at the end of the day, you’ve got a life to live, and places to be, and a mark or two on your purse isn’t going to stop you.