Designer selling world’s most expensive paper bag

(Courtesy LN-CC.com)

Having to brown-bag your lunch can be so déclassé. But top designer Jil Sander has come up with a solution: a simple yet so-very-stylish paper bag with a US$290 price tag.

That’s right: a brown paper bag for $290. Actually, it’s called a men’s “clutch.” The Vasari clutch, to be precise. The bag is made of coated kraft paper and features "a long rectangular silhouette,” according to online retailer LN-CC.

Details include “stitched seams” and “four metal eyelets,” presumably to let your PB&J breathe. And of course, the designer’s logo is featured clearly on the bottom.

Brown paper too pedestrian for you? Fret not: the Vasari also comes in black leather. It’s a mere US$630.

According to style bible W Magazine, the black leather version is “perfectly in sync with the fashion house’s minimalist roots” and is “turning a necessity into an indulgence.

“Forget recycling - this bag is a keeper,” the website gushes.

If you think no one would be foolish to pay hundreds of dollars for a lunch bag when they could get a year’s worth of paper bags for a whole lot less, you don’t understand fashion.

The medium size of the bag is sold out on the LN-CC website and the Jil Sander store in Manhattan’s SoHo neighbourhood is sold out too.

While plenty have taken to the Web to scoff at the absurd bag and its more absurd price, others point out it’s nowhere near the $100,000 price tag of an Hermes Birkin bag, for example. And while this bag likely won’t last as long as a Birkin, there’s the tiniest chance it might even appreciate in value.

Mildred Fabian, director of retail for Jil Sander in North America, tells the New York Daily News that the Vasari bags are part of the design house’s last collection from Raf Simons. She’s is not surprised they’re selling out.

“You have to get a collector’s piece,” she told the paper.