Santa Claus is a remarkable individual. Not just for his generosity and his unparalleled distribution methods, but also his construction skills. For instance, the Christmas before last, he obviously spent many hours painstakingly putting together a Barbie doll house for Daughter Number Four. This thing had a lift and a slide and dozens of minuscule design features. How he managed to keep track of the complex instructions without losing any of the tiny components really is a testament to him.
On Christmas morning, Daughter Number Four didn’t seem to consider all this labour, but instead set about some work of her own, carefully hanging up rows of toy clothes and positioning the furniture in just the right places. It took her hours.
And then, that was it. It’s not that she stopped playing with it, but her interest waned dramatically after it had been set up in her bedroom. She would go through phases, especially if other children were in the house, and then ignore it for months on end. It was as if Santa delivered the present just at a time when she was starting to grow out of playing with dolls: a transition none of us realised she was going through. Just a few weeks ago we gave it away to another household where a little girl was crackling with excitement about its arrival. No doubt she’ll go through the same cycle.
The vacant space in Daughter Number Four’s bedroom has now been taken up by a desk. And while there is a vague parental hope that she’ll use it to do homework, she seems to be concentrating on its decorative aspects: as a display area for her Labubus.
Labubu dolls will be piling up in landfill in six months’ time
My wife speaks to me from other parts of the house, for reasons that puzzle me
My granddaughter’s birthday party was partially a celebration, but also to mark a departure
We decided to drive the new EV across the country. It wasn’t long before things became tense
She’s just walked in and noticed the word on my computer screen, and she wants you to know that she’s obsessed with them. “Obsessed” is the latest word to be rendered virtually free of all meaning.
Yet she’s unable to explain what is it about them she finds so compelling: other than they are cute (a debatable claim), and that there are endless varieties to be collected.
She cannot pinpoint when she first heard about them: all of a sudden, Labubus was all everyone she knows was talking about. Manufactured by a Chinese company, they have been in circulation since 2019, but exploded in popularity last year when a K-pop star took to hooking them on to her handbags. Millions of kids and adults do the same: a €30 Labubu can be routinely combined with a €1,200 Gucci bag. It is, apparently, a fashion statement.
“Fashion statement” is an interesting and contradictory phrase. In the dictionary, it means to wear something bold and original, to express something about yourself. But if you’re sitting in a restaurant with your Labubu amid half a dozen people with the same thing, that’s the opposite of originality: it’s conformity. The “statement” is merely that there is a fashion trend and you’re keeping up with it.
[ My wife speaks to me from other parts of the house, for reasons that puzzle meOpens in new window ]
Yet this seems to happen with unerring frequency – the speed of it multiplied by social media. In six months, Labubus might be all over: piling up in landfill, alongside all those massive Stanley cups from last year. Apart from the epoch-defining waste of it all, there’s a baffling human tendency to want something just for the sake of having it. Daughter Number Four could play with the Barbie house. It had a function. But a Labubu doesn’t do anything. It just sits there, grinning maniacally.
And right now, a factory is about to go into production with a new sort of key chain, or hand wipe, a hair clip or a bracelet. It doesn’t matter what the thing is. What’s crucial to the manufacturer is that they figure out how to alchemise the desire: make people queue outside shops or wildly bid for “rare” examples. Make them obsessed. Until a new object, and a new word, comes along.
