Meeting Mr Bags

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.

- Anna Murphy

Unless 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 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.