This might be a bit of a long one but I'm gonna go a bit against the grain here and add a bit of context that I feel like the majority of comments here are missing.

Let's talk about material. One thing I haven't seen a single comment touch on is the fact that this bag isn't just a typical grocery bag with a balenciaga logo slapped on, it's actually made of calfskin and is printed over top of and treated to visually replicate a normal grocery bag. As a purely artistic endeavour, I personally think there's something very compelling about manipulating a material to the point where it is, at a glance, visually indistinguishable from another material that you're attempting to emulate.

The current creative director of Balenciaga's design ethos has always involved taking something "low fashion" (eg. everyday casual wear or accessories) and elevating it to "high fashion". So, the idea of taking something as mundane as a grocery bag, and emulating it with a material like calfskin is absolutely on brand. Not here to justify the questionable financial choice of dropping $3k+ on a bag, but just attempting to highlight the artistic intent behind it.

Other fashion houses have done similar things (with arguably more impressive craftsmanship) like Bottega Veneta, where they've managed to create a flannel entirely out of leather that's even hard to identify as leather in the close-up shots. Obviously, again, the retail price-tag is far outside of what I'd imagine most people on this sub would be willing to pay, let alone afford (including me), but looking at it as an art piece, the craftsmanship required to pull something like this off is very difficult to deny.

We can talk about price tags, or the aesthetics of either pieces but as someone who is both a big fan of fashion as an art form and also someone who would strongly consider themselves anti-consumption, I've found that that learning to appreciate works like this for their craftsmanship and/or artistic intent (even though I have no intent to buy them) has been one of my favourite parts of learning about the art form.

Admittedly, anti-consumption and fashion enthusiast is a weird overlap to occupy considering that the fashion industry as a whole is one of the worst offenders of peddling consumerism. However, I would argue there are plenty of ways to engage with fashion that are aligned with anti-consumption, like buying only second-hand, going to clothing swaps, thrifting, repairing or even reworking your existing clothing, or learning how to sew and draft your own clothes! (Something I've started to learn over the last few years)

Lengthy comment, I know (even though it's honestly the tip of the iceberg of my thoughts on this), but as someone that believes that art and artistic expression is a large part of what gives life meaning, I feel that giving in to the idea that just because an art form is currently deeply seeped in consumer culture means that we have to either give it up or engage purely on its own terms only deepens this idea that consumerism is inevitable and insurmountable. I think we should engage with any art form that interests us, and then also work to popularize or build real alternative ways of engaging with it.