The Cult Of Labubu & More Is More

Hit the dopamine, I'm a fully paid member of the More Is More Club, but even for me, the world might have gone a bit bonkers

Labubu. La Who Who? Call it a professional red flag but thanks to years of fash writing I am nothing if not a sucker for a micro trend, especially when it’s a craze so explosive that it has turned its owner into a very young billionaire in a matter of years. Single digit years.

It is Labubu. No, it’s not a macaron nor a confection, Gen Z slang or a club in Ibiza. It’s an ugly cute collectible toy - yes, toy- with a toothsome, rather devilish grin that is adorning the Birkins of everyone who can get their mitts on one. And I do mean Birkin - if you have a Labubu it’s not accessorizing some povvo outfit, its full-fat luxury.

While most of, ahem, Gen X, can’t see the point of squealing to the camera in an extreme close-up on Tiktok as one rips open a blind box with a carefully manicured stiletto nail, Gen Z is obsessed. ASMR goes: scream, pull, crinkle, rip, Labubu.

Despite knowing how tricksy it is to snag a Labubu in June of the year of our lord 2025, I was determined to spot the furry li’l feckers when I was recently in London. I assumed I would see them everywhere! And also PS I love a bag charm. But not so fast, my young fashion lover! Even in the heart of the first world, they were hard to find and when I did finally spot a Labubu in the wild, good grief, it was precious cargo.

I made eye contact with a man on the tube, as you try not to do, because his chocolate brown Labubu – my first sighting in Not-The-Serengeti - was encased in a bespoke plastic Labubu-shaped case. Was this for Labubu-nappers? Was it for weather? I was dying to know, but also in the grand scheme of ‘if you own something that you love then enjoy it’ versus ‘if you own something that you love then hide it away at all costs’, I am always Team Enjoy It!

Alas, probs shouldn’t comment, I have yet to risk life and limb trying to own a Labubu so I could be speaking completely out of turn. Perhaps nefarious fash-loving Labubu-nappers are out there in their droves.

I did, incidentally, see my fave jewellery commentator, Julia Chafe - find her here - dishing the deets on a Labubu that she spotted that was entirely deserving of a kidnapping. The Labubu was sporting – yes keep up, the Labubu was wearing this not the Labubu-owner – a big AF diamond tennis bracelet, Van Cleef bracelet, a whopper emerald ring and a Cartier Clou as a headband.

You’ll spot snaggle-toothed Labubus nipped onto bag handles the length and breadth of social media. They have gone so insanely viral that it is A) impossible to bag one and B) made their company a multi-billion dollar listing.

So what the actual…? It’s the perfect storm of 90s nostalgia, fashun’s resurgence of bag charms and Tiktok’s obsesh with insider status, plus the little beasts are ugly-cute with a backstory mired in rich Nordic folklore… Walk back to the 80s with me - it’s as if my Monchichi (small, cute, collectible) matched with a Cabbage Patch Kid (personalised with a backstory) but also had Tiktok (boom!)

We would have died. Me personally of jealousy since I never did manage to convince my parents that I couldn’t live without a Cabbage Patch Kid. My mother thought they were hideous but she was waylaid by the cutesy Monchichis, so maybe…

Anyway, PopMart managed to bottle this magic in – you guessed it - Labubu.

Pop Mart is the Chinese-owned toy company founded by now-billionaire Wang Ning. He opened his first retail store back in 2010 but it was ten years ago that Things – as they say in the biz - really took off. That’s when he launched the company’s first blind box. It’s genius. In a nutshell, Pop Mart – the store – would collaborate with a creative and release a toy line that you had to buy blind - aka packaged so that you couldn’t see which one you were getting. It offers the same rush as those superhero cards we used to beg for at the garage on the way to the Kruger back in 1989. Some idiot cousin you were sharing the backseat with always got the one card you still wanted!

Anyhoo, Labubu operates on the same principle…Its hugely addictive knowing what the collection looks like while simultaneously having to take a guess on which random Labubu you get from the store… This mystery box approach has sky- rocketed the company’s market value to around $40B – it made almost $2B from Labubu alone last year - making young Wang the 10^th richest person in China and its youngest billionaire.

The blind box taps into surprise and collectability as there are sets to be completed and rare ‘chase’ figures… I mean, sign me up, right? The Labubus are released as limited editions – but here’s how great crazy it is… A Labubu blind box sells for around $28, but a rare Labubu can already fetch anything from $300 to $5000. Yes, buy for $30 and sell for $5000. I know enough girl maths to know that this is WILD. Last year, a Labubu sold for $170 000 on auction. It was a life-size iteration of the little monster but still, mense, still.

Celebs loading up on Labubu also helps – BlackPink’s Lisa (that’s White Lotus Lisa to us), Dua Lipa, Rihanna, they’re all fans. And the more I write this newsie, the more I realise that Mister Tube Man was probably absolutely right to encase his Labubu in a wee perspex coffin. Although having said that, what would you do with a man who arrived to a date with an oxygen-starved Labubu baby swinging from the straps of his bag. As one of my wonderful, deeply millennial ex-colleagues uses to dryly declare: ‘what a time to be alive’.

Indeed. Sigh.