The world of fashion sees inspiration in the wildest of things. Just recently, luxury apparel brand Balenciaga was hilariously trolled for selling our regular ‘thailas’ for a maddening sum of ₹1.5 lakh. This regular shopping bag can easily come under a ₹100, but Balenciaga thought otherwise and made it a fashionable accessory.
The shopper bags, priced between USD $1,090 to $2090 is leaving us Indian folks in absolute wonder. The bags are, however, made of calf-skin leather. This explains the high price. But the striking resemblance of the pattern and shape of the bag to the ‘thaila’ is what is most amusing. The quite odd bag, complete with classic checkered patterns, shape and colours is not going to fool us. It is, however, highly unlikely that the average Western shopper will buy a bag as mundane as this to go about shopping. Tote bags, recycled materials, or even the regular brown bag does the job.
Easy Money From Regular Household Items
Western brands have a thing for picking mundane items from the east and branding it as a luxurious must-have back home. SheIN received heavy backlash after making away with selling prayer mats as Greek rugs. Not only fast fashion, but high-fashion also sees opportunity in this method. A furniture brand from New Zealand is actually selling the regular charpai as ‘Vintage Indian Bed’ for almost ₹41,000. Gucci also came under fire for selling tops that were, in fact, the desi kurta. Although these instances seem amusing, it also important to note how blatantly Western brands misrepresent culture. Household items from the Asian diaspora are paraded as insanely exotic items by them, making huge sums of money.
Balenciaga is yet to make any comment for the incident. The bag is also common in many African countries, and also reacted similarly to Indians. To any regular individual, incidents like these continue to be extremely baffling. How and why do such products attract customers, will always remain a mystery for the likes of us.
