Man in a brown fur coat holding a small black handbag talking to a curly-haired woman in a black coat outside a brick building in the snow.
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Men Were Just a Quarter of the Luxury Handbag Market Last Year, and Erling Haaland Is Single-Handedly Dragging Them in with His £1 Million Bag Collection

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It’s not a purse. It’s European!

Apparently Erling Haaland has generated $8.8 million in brand value for Hermès over the course of the World Cup, more than any other luxury name tracked by Launchmetrics during the tournament.

His collection includes a limited-edition multi-pocket Haut à Courroies Birkin and a rare HAC painted with a road-and-mountain scene, each running around $50,000 on resale sites and nearly impossible to find in an actual Hermès boutique.

Erling Haaland in an all-white outfit and Isabel Haugseng Johansen in a black crop top and jeans walk past a yellow Ferrari logo sign in Maranello, Italy.
At Ferrari’s Maranello, Italy headquarters on May 27, 2024, Erling Haaland and Isabel Haugseng Johansen pass a Ferrari sign during his visit to the iconic facility. Photo by Alessandro Fiocchi / Getty Images Sport via Getty Images.

He’s not the only one. Virgil van Dijk has carried a Chanel from Matthieu Blazy’s debut collection, and Jude Bellingham, a Louis Vuitton ambassador, favors the monogram edition. Bloomberg Opinion columnist Andrea Felsted argues that footballers like them have taken the man bag from derided to desirable at a useful moment for a $400 billion industry: the number of premium purses sold has been falling since 2022, and average luxury handbag prices are up 60% since 2019.

Erling Haaland posing with luxury handbags in an Instagram photo
Erling Haaland shows off part of his luxury handbag collection on Instagram. (Erling Haaland/Instagram)

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Men made up just a quarter of the global luxury handbag market in 2025, according to Bain & Co., which the industry sees as room to grow rather than a ceiling. Searches for Haaland’s Birkins peaked the day Norway played England, and searches for bigger Birkins on resale sites have climbed since the World Cup began.

Erling Haaland in a grey turtleneck and wide-leg trousers walks hand-in-hand with Isabel Haugseng Johansen in a silver crystal mesh dress on a Rome cobblestone street.
Haaland and girlfriend Isabel Haugseng Johansen hold hands on the cobblestones outside Castel Sant’Angelo during the Dolce & Gabbana Alta Sartoria show in Rome on July 15, 2025. Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto / GC Images via Getty Images.

The 25-year-old striker picked up the momentum right as Norway’s run ended, knocked out by England in the quarter-finals, the farthest the country has ever gone in the tournament.

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