The CEO Magazine Asia – July 2019

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western brands court his attention, and now pay

for his aesthetic input to create a Mr Bags limited

edition of one of their styles.

We are talking on the terrace, and even a hot

sunny day is not enough to make this most

leveraged of fashion junkies unshoulder-robe his

Chanel jacket. He employs 17 people and, with his

assorted revenue streams, is likely to be pulling

down a seven-figure sum per annum, though won’t

be drawn on figures. (“I didn’t do it originally to

make money. When I started it was a hobby.”)

Given that McKinsey’s latest report predicts that

Chinese consumers are set to spend about US$180

billion on luxury goods by 2025, it’s no surprise

someone like Mr Bags holds such traction.

It’s his brand collaborations that most clearly

demonstrate his pulling power. Givenchy sold

£150,000 (US$189,000) worth of his baby-pink take

on its Horizon bag in 12 minutes in the run-up to

Valentine’s Day in 2017. Longchamp and Tod’s both

worked with him on canine-inspired styles for 2018,

the Year of the Dog. The former’s is decorated with

what Tao calls – in a rare lapse of his excellent

U

nless you are a serious handbag

aficionado, I imagine I will have to fill

you in on who, and indeed what, Mr Bags

is. Because Tao Liang, his real name,

is a “what”: a cultural/consumer phenomenon in

the guise of a 27-year-old blogger on the topic of,

you guessed it, handbags.

I am in the VIP shopping penthouse at Galeries

Lafayette in Paris to meet someone who calls

himself, entirely without irony, Mr Bags. And who,

again without irony, says things like “the minibag

is super-big in China”.

Although you may need him explained, his six

million followers on Weibo – China’s answer to

Twitter – are so intimately acquainted with all that

he does and represents that they have their own

collective noun: “Bagfans”.

“I have this innate brain power or something,”

this charming man-child tells me. “I know when

I look at a bag whether it’s going to be successful

in the Chinese market.” He keeps his followers

abreast of which bags are the best for them, and

they listen – and then spend – in droves. No wonder

Mr

Bags

MEETING

TAO LIANG’S SO-CALLED BAGFANS – SIX MILLION OF THEM –

HANG ON HIS EVERY WORD. WE MEET THE 27-YEAR-OLD KING

OF LUXURY ARM CANDY.

WORDS ANNA MURPHY / THE TIMES MAGAZINE / THE INTERVIEW PEOPLE

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