They’re furry, have feisty-looking little faces and have been causing such furore in stores recently that they were temporarily pulled from shelves. A Labubu is what all the cool girls are carrying right now: collectible plush toy monsters that clip on to — and carry even more cachet than — their handbags. Demand is so feverish, it has given rise to another way to get your hands on them. For £4 a day you can now rent one.
Hermès, Chanel, Bottega Veneta, Labubu. Rental platforms have long been where fashionistas go to borrow cult and out-of-budget buys, but the most watched item right now is not a sell-out designer bag; rather, it’s a £17.50 fuzzy, bunny-eared gremlin key-ring doll available in various outfits and colours.
• Asia is major for today’s globalised teens
Labubus look like a cross between a Teletubby and something that would eat a Sylvanian. They have plastic faces, shaggy fur, deranged toothy grins and dilated, sometimes sliding, eyes. Laugh if you want (I do, ha-ha) but the curious, creepy-yet-cutesy creatures have grown men and women in a chokehold.
I have seen mile-long queues on Oxford Street for Pop Mart, the Chinese retailer in which they are exclusively sold, and spotted them attached to bag straps on the front row. An in-the-know 24-year-old colleague has them. So do Rihanna and Dua Lipa.
• Viral Labubu doll sales halted as desperate shoppers brawl
The second-hand market is flooded with them. On the streetwear resale platform StockX one special edition model is on sale for £2,398. Physical fights have broken out in Pop Mart, which recently, for the — checks notes — “safety and comfort of everyone”, withdrew Labubu dolls from its UK stores. Until they’re back, obsessives are renting them on the British borrowing website By Rotation instead. It tells me some customers are, for over-the-odds prices, sneakily trying to buy them.
Look at the bags Labubus get attached to to get the gist of their current status. On By Rotation one is shown hanging from an Hermès Birkin, another from a classic Chanel 2.55. I stick mine, freshly delivered from the website, on the ponyskin & Other Stories number I brought to work. Usually this bag gets attention for the fact it looks pricier than its high street origins. With the strange little Labubu attached, not so much.
• Labubu dolls: why adults are queueing up for these exclusive toys
It arrives in the “blind” box they all come cased in. Like Pokémon cards in my school days, part of the frenzy around Labubus is the fact you don’t know what you’re buying until you open the box. Similar to most cult fashion items, the one temporarily in my possession goes largely unremarked on by the throngs on my commute. I hope some hip-looking Gen Z art students I pass give me kudos, but I’ll have to assume their appreciation is silent.
While I’m not overly fond of it, I do keep a close eye on my new pistachio-hued charge. There have been shocking reports of Labubu theft. I daren’t imagine what the lender would do if its Labubu didn’t make it back. It sent strict instructions not to even damage the box.