Fashion

AW Designed An $8,800 Beanbag Chair

by Erin Mayer

What does an effortlessly cool designer do once they've hit the big time? Whatever they want, obviously. Alexander Wang designed an $8,800 beanbag chair, simply because he can. OK, so he designed it as part of a collection for Italian furniture brand Poltrona Frau, but really. Semantics. I guess this means Wang has left the relative affordability of H&M faaaaar behind, now doesn't it?

WSJ Magazine reports that the (too cool to host his runway shows in Manhattan like everybody else) designer has created a three-piece range for the luxurious European brand, which includes two versions of the beanbag (one in "inky black shearling" and one in leather) and a black bar cabinet trimmed in brass. At almost $9,000, this is certainly not the bong water-soaked beanbag chair of your college boyfriend's dorm room, but it's basically a bargain-basement find compared to that cabinet, which costs $18,500.

"It’s banal, an everyday item,” Wang told WSJ Magazine. “We always had them in the TV room. But I like to recontextualize what is banal, what is luxurious. To make it with Poltrona, that just completely changes it. And yet at the end of the day, it’s still a beanbag chair.”

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that once a beanbag chair costs almost as much as a full year of NYC rent, it can't really be considered a beanbag chair anymore. It becomes, like... something else entirely.

Is this how a heath goth with an overflowing trust fund kicks back after a long day of SoulCycle? In a leather and/or inky shearling beanbag?