Jelisa Castrodale is an acclaimed writer based in the American South who has spent over a decade covering food, culture, travel, and sports for publications on both sides of the Atlantic. She has been a staff writer with Food & Wine since 2019.

Expertise: food, travel, pop culture. Packaging Machine

Experience: Jelisa Castrodale's work has appeared on MSN, NBC Sports, People, VICE, and USA Today, among other publications. She is also a former Jeopardy! champion who should probably stop mentioning that in conversation.

If you just licked the salt off your fingers and threw that now-empty bag of Lay's potato chips in the trash, you might want to reconsider: that's apparently the hottest new accessory. Okay, so an actual package of chips may not appear on the catwalk anytime soon, but Balenciaga recently revealed its very real (and very unexpected) partnership with Frito-Lay during its show at Paris Fashion Week.

As first reported by Hypebeast, several models who took part in Balenciaga's "The Mud Show" presentation were carrying leather clutches that looked like empty Lay's bags. At first glance, the leather bags appear to have the same branding as the packages that are inside your office vending machine, but the flavor has been replaced by "Balenciaga."

In a statement obtained by Food & Wine, Balenciaga confirmed that each "L.O.L. Clutch" is made of high-gloss leather "has been treated to resemble a chip bag with a [...] crumpled effect." The bags each have a metallic silver lining, a zipper closure, and a nutrition label printed on the back. They will eventually be available to purchase and will retail for $1,500 each.

If you're still reading (or didn't lose consciousness after that last sentence), the bags are also available in four "flavors" which resemble the packaging of four different varieties of Lay's chips, including Classic, Flamin' Hot, Limón, and Salt & Vinegar.

The L.O.L. Clutch was designed by Balenciaga's creative director Demna. The French fashion house said that Demna was inspired to create this bag because he "loves chips in general" and "has carried a bag of Lay's potato chips as an accessory before." He took his own off-the-rack empty chip bag to the graduate show of Antwerp's Royal Academy of Fine Arts in June — a decision that now feels like foreshadowing. ("Just as long as it's not a Lay's x Balenciaga collab teaser, I fully support this," Paper Mag joked at the time.)

The reaction to the L.O.L. Clutch has been, well, exactly what you'd expect when someone suggests paying $1,500 for a leather Lay's bag — especially when exactly zero chips are included in the purchase price. While some commenters made jokes about the concept or about the partnership, others were disappointed in an entirely different way.

"It's very upsetting to see a Hot Lay's bag when y'all don't have Hot Lay's in any store or even online," one commenter wrote on the @Lays Instagram account. "Like, we have enough of the other flavors [...] and now we can't find [Hot Lay's.]"

Beef Jerky Packaging Machine Who knew Hot Lay's were so haute?