Somewhere, a “what’s in my bag” video is waiting to happen for a crystal cactus. Good luck to whoever tries it.
Across recent couture, Cruise and ready-to-wear collections, handbags became as much about what you notice as what you carry. A piggy bank. A silver armadillo. A fish bursting through quilted leather. None of them begins with practicality.
Not an everyday essential. Not another investment piece. An object. Something sculptural enough to stop you in your tracks before you’ve even wondered what fits inside it.
Jonathan Anderson’s second haute couture collection for Dior, Fall/Winter 2026–2027, introduced an Armadillo Minaudière and an embellished cactus-shaped minaudière, extending the collection’s dialogue with the sculptural work of Lynda Benglis.
@dior
At Schiaparelli, Daniel Roseberry paired a plush shearling clutch with gilded anatomical finger jewellery for the maison’s Fall/Winter 2026–2027 ready-to-wear collection. Meanwhile, Ashi Studio’s Spring/Summer 2026 haute couture collection, The Beginnings, featured a modelled crocodile bag topped with an 18th-century sculpted bronze handle.
@schiaparelli@studioashi
Meanwhile, Chanel placed a sculptural metallic fish across a quilted flap bag in Matthieu Blazy’s Cruise 2026/27 collection, and Moschino’s Fall/Winter 2026–2027 collection did what the house has always done best: turning a pink piggy bank into a handbag without losing its sense of humour.
@chanelofficial@Moschino
None of these bags resemble one another. Yet they all reject the same idea: that a handbag should quietly disappear into an outfit.
Robert Wun took the idea furthest. His Fall/Winter 2026–2027 haute couture collection, Childsplay, included a bespoke red spherical handbag created with PabePabe. With its circular top handle and perfectly rounded body, it reads first as an object and only then as a bag.
The collection drew on childhood imagination and fairy tales, making an accessory that refuses conventional proportions feel entirely at home.
@robertowun
What ties an armadillo to a piggy bank to a sphere is not aesthetic. It’s intent. For much of the past decade, luxury’s biggest commercial successes have tended to rely on recognisable silhouettes returned to season after season. These pieces pull in the opposite direction. They’re designed less to become permanent fixtures than memorable runway moments.
They’re also a reminder that accessories can still surprise us. In an industry built on recognisable icons, these bags choose personality over permanence. They’re less concerned with becoming the next classic than with creating a moment people remember.
There’s a particular satisfaction in a bag that has no interest in being practical. It wants to be looked at, picked up and turned over in your hands like something you’d find on a collector’s shelf rather than in a leather goods department.
