Down the Huangpu River it floated, the massive model of Louis Vuitton’s famous-again bag

In April this year, a video of several gigantic Le Bambino bags by Jacquemus speeding down a rue in Paris went viral. As it turned out, the bags were not real even if the stunt did redefine the expression ‘hit the streets’. The French brand later admitted that those bags, in different colours and the antithesis of the original in terms of size, were “3D renderings”. Conversely, the recent sighting and the videos that were subsequently shared on Chinese social media Douyin (抖音) and Xiaohongshu (小红书) of a colossal Louis Vuitton Speedy down the Huangpu River (黄浦江) were the actual, physical thing. This is not the first time a bag is made in such grand proportion. In 2021, Burberry made a giantess out of their Olympia. And, in London, it floated down the Thames. But LV’s is undeniably the chunkier and flashier one. Set afloat since 2 December on the waters along The Bund of Shanghai, with the skylight of Pudong (浦东) as background, the kenspeckle bag—in red and the unmistakable LV monogram—is the brand’s latest star, already made more famous by the “Million” version (worth US$1 million) that designer Pharrell Williams has been carrying around somewhat boastfully.

Under Mr Williams’s stewardship, Louis Vuitton continues to reaffirm the belief that the brand does not do things in small measures. From the musician’s debut LV show in Paris to this riparian spectacle in Shanghai, big is better in their branding exercise. It is as if the products themselves are not quite enough. Could LV’s marketing exuberance a compensation for their menswear’s merchandise lameness? The Speedy, for example, is not reimagined in ways that could thrill. Rather, they are just more colour-saturated. If you were no fan of the Speedy before, you are unlikely one now. Mr Williams’s re-colouring of the Speedy is, according to him, inspired the knock-offs found in Manhattan’s Canal Street. The counterfeit versions are often seen in colours LV have never offered. So Mr Williams decided to make them an LV reality. For fashion students, this is fine examplar of the bubble-up effect.

The irony of the bright, big, and bold Speedy sailing down the Huangpu is not lost. Most of the colourful LV fakes come from China. According to a Reuters report last February, “China leads the world in counterfeit and pirated products”, a point underscored by the Office of U.S. Trade, whose representative Katherine Tai added, “Counterfeit and pirated goods from China, together with trans-shipped goods from China to Hong Kong, accounted for 75% of the value of counterfeit and pirated goods seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in 2021.” Despite the problem, in Shanghai—the commercial heart of China, a towering blow-up of a gaudy LV bag knocking off gaudy knock-offs that likely came from Chinese factories drew the attention of Chinese luxury consumers and aroused their appetites. Could Mr Williams and Louis Vuitton be saying, we can take your fakes and make them better and our own? They sure have the money, the clout, and, undeniably, the audacity.

Screen shot: Douyin