A $20 Uniqlo bag – the Round Mini Shoulder Bag – recently climbed to the top of The Lyst Index, fashion tech company Lyst’s quarterly ranking of the hottest products. It’s the cheapest product ever featured on the list – and it even beat a pair of $625 Rick Owens sunglasses. Here’s why this is a big deal and what it says about the state of fashion trends.
Uniqlo’s Round Mini Shoulder Bag Created A Serious Buzz
If you’re wondering what scoring the No.1 spot on The Lyst Index means, Lyst filters more than eight million items by volume of social media mentions alongside searches, page views, interactions and sales in the Lyst app to identify the world’s most in-demand products.
When you consider that Uniqlo is not exactly comparable to the likes of Gucci and Saint Laurent, the usual suspects featured by Lyst, the understated Round Mini Shoulder Bag just achieved a Herculean feat. And you can blame TikTok for it.
After going viral and generating over 87 million views on the platform, the bag sold out multiple times across multiple colorways. TikTokers rave about the spacious interior of the water-repellent top-zip polyester purse and its low-key yet stylish design. It’s the “It” bag that was never supposed to become one.
A Perfect Example of the Rise of ‘Quiet Luxury’
That said, Uniqlo’s bag popularity is actually not all that surprising when you consider the current state of the world. Quiet luxury is on the rise. Glamour describes the trend as “the idea is that certain privileged folk (read: super rich people) are adopters of a subtle dress code that exudes luxury without the obvious markers, such as excessive logos, big name brands and the trending shapes and styles that everyone else is wearing.”
According to Vogue, “it’s not an easy aesthetic to pin down, and it’s more of a mood than anything else.” It’s also a look that will stand the test of time, as it’s essentially “a synonym for elevated basics.”
Fashion experts say the rise of quiet luxury is sort of the antithesis to the loud dopamine dressing trend that followed the lifting of pandemic restrictions. People wanted to have more fun and live again. But with the economy slowing down and fears of recession looming, fashion trends are following suit – those who have wealth don’t want to flaunt it and those who don’t are shopping smartly. “Right now, we are living through times that call for that more paired back approach,” Lorna Hall, director of fashion intelligence at trend-forecasting firm WGSN, told Insider.
In other words, it makes so much sense that people are all over Uniqlo’s Round Mini Shoulder Bag. Perhaps you’ll be able to get your hands on one. If not, keep an eye out for other quiet luxury-inspired fashion finds.
