In Louis Vuitton’s Spring/Summer 2026 menswear collection, the most provocative object wasn’t a garment but a handbag that was shaped unmistakably like an autorickshaw, lacquered in the brand’s monogrammed canvas and fitted with leather handlebars, wheels and even a tiny windshield.
At first glance the bag is absurd and fascinating. However, it also poses as a lesson in how fashion can both romanticise and commodify the mundane. In this case, commodifying South Asian trademarks.
The fashion show that featured the collection was a deliberate attempt at cross-continental storytelling – not just in form, but in spirit.
The set included a reimagining of the ancient Indian game snakes and ladders, the soundtrack wove in Punjabi beats, including an original song titled “Yaara” composed by A.R. Rahman and creative director Pharell Williams, and models sashayed down a runway with a backdrop that evoked Delhi’s warmth more than Parisian cool.
Yet it is the autorickshaw bag that has stirred the most conversation.“Middle-class struggle is now luxury,” said a netizen, while another joked, “If I see a South Delhi aunty stepping out of her Audi with this, I’ll riot.”
The autorickshaw, in South Asia, is a symbol of modest survival – the transportation of the masses. To see it gilded in Vuitton’s iconography, priced in the thousands, S$52,000 to be exact, and destined for glass-shelved boutiques in London or Seoul, raises the inevitable question: Is this homage or appropriation?
The answer isn’t simple. Williams’ team did conduct extensive research in India, collaborating with design studios in Mumbai and visiting craft centers in Delhi and Jodhpur.
The collection seems to appreciate Indian culture more than appropriate, as it appears to have been created with a studied hand, featuring elements that are emblematic of India, from opulent chess sets to Indian textile motifs.
The same cannot be said about Prada, another luxury brand that recently revealed its menswear collection with Kolhapuri chappals, the layman’s choice of footwear in India. Punching down and cashing in on a former British colony’s culture without credit is simply in bad taste.
However, that does not mean Louis Vuitton is completely innocent. Sincerity does not neutralise the power dynamics at play. Luxury fashion, by its nature, is about elevation – of materials, of stories, of value. When the aesthetic of the everyday is rendered in calfskin and gold zippers, the transformation is no longer neutral.
Perhaps that’s the point. Louis Vuitton’s autorickshaw bag is not meant to be carried so much as discussed. It joins a lineage of playful, sculptural bags by Louis Vuitton – lizards, sharks, and now, autorickshaws.
But in turning the hyperlocal into the hyperluxurious, it reveals the paradox of global fashion today, which is a desire to celebrate other cultures, paired with an instinct to control how that celebration is seen, sold, and worn. The irony should not be lost on Williams that the autorickshaw bag he designed is utterly inaccessible to the millions of people who actually commute by autorickshaws on a daily basis.
At the end of the day, the bag is a metaphor on wheels – a rolling contradiction between authenticity and artifice. Like fashion itself, it transports us. The only question is – who gets to ride?
