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Your support makes all the difference.<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nRead more<\/span><\/svg><\/span><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nW<\/span>hen 26-year-old healthcare consultant Michelle Keller peeled open the shiny packaging to reveal a chestnut furry gremlin baby staring back at her, she squealed. She had completed the mission. After hours of elbowing her way through central London crowds last month to find a Labubu, a wildly popular keyring doll originating from Hong Kong, she had successfully located the highly coveted \u201crare special\u201d Labubu. In addition to its brown fuzzy coat, it comes with freckles, a red nose, rabbit-like ears, and spiky, menacing gnashers (imagine a crossover between a creature from Where the Wild Things Are<\/em> and an evil Teletubby). Keller had, essentially, won the collectable toy lottery. <\/p>\nThere\u2019s no denying she worked hard to get there. Tension filled the air inside the Soho store belonging to Chinese retailer Pop Mart when the staff emerged with fresh Labubus from the stockroom. \u201cEveryone rushed over and grabbed multiple boxes. I was like, \u2018I didn\u2019t know that today I had to fight… I was not mentally prepared for this,\u2019\u201d Keller laughs. \u201cI just made sure the child in front of me had secured one, and then I was like, \u2018Grab two, grab two!\u2019\u201d She proudly wears the dolls attached to her handbag, and takes it everywhere she goes. <\/p>\n
Keller is just one of the thousands of young women dedicating their weekends to Labubu hunts, posting aesthetically pleasing pictures of the toys on Instagram and accessorising their bags with these creepy-looking six-inch-tall figures. The dolls, belonging to a tribe called The Monsters, created by Hong Kong illustrator Kasing Lung, are the latest in a long line of collectable characters from Asia, including Hello Kitty, Sonny Angel and Monchichi, that have driven the internet into a frenzy. <\/p>\n
This week, Pop Mart, which exclusively sells Labubus globally, announced it has temporarily stopped selling the toys in its physical UK stores for the \u201csafety and comfort of everyone\u201d after tales of retail bedlam. Customers have been camping outside the stores from dawn, and there have been reports of violence as hungry resellers continue to sweep aisles for Labubus to flog at an inflated price (they typically start at \u00a317.50, but some of the rarest are available to buy online for \u00a31,500). <\/p>\n
The craze is in part down to the fact that they are sold in \u201cblind boxes\u201d, which means people will keep on buying the dolls until they find their desired one. While researching this piece, I hear from Labubu connoisseurs that people are stealing rare dolls affixed to people\u2019s bags. \u201cLeave your Labubus at home!\u201d reads a post from a distressed Reddit user. Keller tells me she has also stopped wearing the \u201crare special\u201d doll outside, and is instead drafting in her two less valuable Labubus.<\/p>\n
While the UK is arguably late to the trend, since Labubu was launched in 2019, sporting one of these goblins has become the latest status symbol for young women. Just like owning a Stanley cup in every colour was the ultimate flex last year, trotting around with a tiny monster attached to your bag signals to your peers that you are culturally aware (well, according to your Instagram algorithm), you are on-trend, and, crucially, you\u2019re part of something<\/em>. <\/p>\nReally, it\u2019s about following a blueprint for a carefully curated aesthetic that\u2019s come to typify young women\u2019s consumeristic tendencies, where our entire existences seem to revolve around trinkets and tiny characters. (I would know, since I\u2019m writing this with a Kawaii Kuties cat plushie resting on my desk.) The trend may feel superficial on the surface, but beneath the TikTok videos and the fisticuffs happening in Pop Mart, many of the women partaking in the trend are doing it to find connection with others.<\/p>\n
And it appears no woman is immune to the pull of the Labubu, which has many celebrity endorsements. There\u2019s Rihanna, who was spotted adorning her Louis Vuitton bag with a lychee berry Labubu, and Dua Lipa, who clipped her grey and white Labubu duo to her Herm\u00e8s Birkin bag while on a trip in Japan, and K-Pop star Lisa Manobal from Blackpink, who posts Labubu hauls online and refers to her growing collection as her \u201cbabies\u201d. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s no surprise, then, that the toys-for-adults market is worth \u00a31bn in the UK, while \u00a31 of every \u00a33 currently spent on toys is spent by a \u201ckidult\u201d \u2013 an adult consumer interested in entertainment aimed at children \u2013 according to toy industry analyst company Circana. Luxury fashion houses have been embracing the wearable plushie trend, too: Miu Miu featured bag charms in its spring\/summer 2024 collection; Danish brand (di)vision sent a plushie-covered coat down the Copenhagen Fashion Week runway last summer; and practically every luxury fashion house is trying to keep up with the trend by selling miniature accessories for clients to display on their bags at a lower price point. <\/p>\n
The popularity of these dolls has emerged at a time when accessorising your outfit with personal trinkets and keychains is increasingly en vogue, with all roads leading back to Jane Birkin\u2019s legacy of decorating her well-loved Herm\u00e8s bag with Save Tibet posters, prayer beads, and even nail clippers in the Eighties. But what\u2019s most interesting about the current trend is that wealthy people are adorning their \u00a315,000 Birkin bags with a snaggly-toothed elf creature that costs less than \u00a320. <\/p>\n
Amanda Marcuson, founder and creative director of the vintage bag charms and keychain company Bag Crap, whose clients include Lily Allen and Tracee Ellis Ross, says that women are increasingly looking to customise their belongings in a unique way that will encapsulate and convey their personality. The artist, who is a longtime charm collector, started accessorising her secondhand Birkin bag because she felt it was \u201ctoo stuffy\u201d. If anything, though, she\u2019s more passionate about her charms than she is about the bag itself. <\/p>\n
\u201cI remember some guy was making fun of me for wearing a Kermit the Frog on my bag, but I was like, \u2018You don’t even know what you\u2019re talking about. This is like a limited edition Kermit the Frog!\u2019\u201d she laughs. Marcuson says that wearing a cheeky character on a luxury bag essentially disarms people. \u201cWhen I see someone walk into a room with a Birkin, \u2018I\u2019m like, oh, shoot,\u2019 but then if you see they have a Labubu on it, then it\u2019s like, \u2018OK, I guess this person knows how to invest in bags and is a silly person.\u2019 It changes the perception of things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since starting her company last year, Marcuson has seen how an entire community is being built around the accessorisation of bags \u2013 with its membersbonding over the characters and symbols they wear in the process. <\/p>\n
\u201cAdding silly charms to your bag is a great way for you to showcase what your interests are without having to tell someone,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s about finding commonalities with other people over bag charms, and that\u2019s something that people are really hungry for right now. If you\u2019re bonding over a character, like a Labubu, it opens the door for easy conversation and connection. Right now, people are looking for opportunities to feel joy and not take things too seriously. It\u2019s liberating to allow yourself to not take things too seriously all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
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open image in gallery<\/span><\/button><\/p>\n<\/div>Wearable plushies have become a staple among luxury fashion aficionados (Getty)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nKeller says that she often has interactions with people who enquire about her rare doll, and finds they can get into deep conversations about different toys, like Smiski and Sonny Angel. \u201cIt\u2019s such a great connection point,\u201d she says. \u201cSometimes I\u2019ll see someone with one on their bag, and I\u2019ll know that they had to go to Japan to get that. It\u2019s a nice sneak peek into someone\u2019s personality.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just young women enjoying the trend, either. Michele Sobel, a luxury goods artist and founder of Michele Sobel\u2019s Fine Art, who paints on designer handbags for clients, has had requests from clients of all ages who are keen to get involved with the trend. One client commissioned Sobel to paint a picture of their most beloved stuffed toy on their \u00a32,000 Goyard tote bag, for example. \u201cMy client has a huge collection of Jellycat bunnies and attaches them to her Goyard bag. We painted three of the bunnies on her Goyard, and she adds key chains and accessories, too.\u201d <\/p>\n
When Sobel shared a picture of another client wearing one of her commissions \u2013 a Louis Vuitton bag she\u2019d customised with a Labubu (a fuzzy white one holding a miniature Diet Coke can) \u2013 she realised the attraction of the dolls. \u201cI have a number of clients of different ages who all say they\u2019re adding Labubus to their bags,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s just really caught on.\u201d<\/p>\n
What makes Labubus different from other popular collectables, though, is that they are… well… a little bit scary \u2013 unlike Jellycats or Squishmallows, which are currently having their own craze among adults but are equally enjoyed by children. In fact, I\u2019d wager that any newborn sighting a Labubu would probably let out a fearsome wail. But Joshua Dale, a professor of \u201ccute studies\u201d at Chuo University in Tokyo, Japan, and the author ofIrresistible: How Cuteness Wired Our Brains and Conquered the World<\/em>, tells me that as cute culture has grown bigger, people are looking for different forms of cuteness outside of conventional Hello Kitty plushies or cat-shaped keyrings. <\/p>\n\u201cThe popularity with non-cute characters, like the sharp teeth and red eyes of Labubus, is that people get jaded with sweet cuteness all the time and want something different,\u201d he says. \u201cLabubus are a bit more interesting because they give off a sense that they\u2019re thinking something, maybe even they want to attack you, but it\u2019s in a similar way to how you would think that about a puppy or a kitten.\u201d<\/p>\n