MSCHF's Global Supply Chain Bag Spotted at NYFW

The notoriously tongue-in-cheek brand behind 2023’s most buzzed-about shoes is back with a purse drop that eschews all conventions. For the Global Supply Chain Telephone Handbag, the label actually stepped back from the design process and let their factory partners take the lead. It’s a heady idea, and one that necessitated a bit of mischief: four factories were supplied incomplete design instructions in sequence, instructions which built off the previous factory in the chain.

Through this generative design process, workers along the manufacturing process filled in gaps and innovated on the prior’s work. The result was a “Frankenstein” bag, as MSCHF dubs it, that seeks to bring the previously obscured creative labor of factory workers to the fore of the fashion industry. In a manifesto supplied to PAPER, MSCHF declared that “the factory performs tremendous amounts of invisible creative labor,” labor which innovates on increasingly complex designs and, because of the skill in execution, “cannot be spotted by the end consumer.”

The lofty goal is quite poignant in context, especially as conversations about fair wages and ethical manufacturing processes continue to dominate the fashion industry. Of course, it also helps that the bag is right at home with a brand consistently pushing against preconceptions about modern fashion and our relationship to it.

PAPER caught some local New Yorkers out and about with the Global Supply Chain Telephone Handbag with New York Fashion Week in full swing...

Photography: Quacey Bull

Talent: Devin Arielle, Katherine Fu, Fritz Von Eric, Lovell Rivera, Devin Joos

Editor-in-chief: Justin Moran
Managing editor: Matt Wille
Fashion editor: Andrew Nguyen
Editorial producer: Angelina Cantú
Type: Jewel Baek