The world of digital audio technology is moving at breakneck speed and one can often uncover curious and very intriguing partnerships – think Maserati and Sonus Faber, Philips and Bowers & Wilkins, Dirac and Nio or Devialet and premium budget flight seats for begin.
Sometimes these budding relationships bear strange but beautiful fruit (see the Maserati Cielo collaboration or Razer's green sneakers with Cariuma). And then sometimes you get a Bluetooth speaker shaped like a metal bag with an Italian lambskin-lined storage compartment inside.
What happened is that luxury clothing brand Balenciaga and Danish high-end audio specialist Bang & Olufsen have released a bag that can play music, something I'm relatively sure neither music lovers nor music lovers fashion will put at the top of your birthday list.
The speaker bag (as it was predictably called) is milled from a solid block of aluminum and has a lambskin-lined storage compartment inside. In another highly predictable moment, B&O described it as "part bag, part Bluetooth sound system."
The Speaker Bag was on display at Balenciaga's 51st couture show in Paris, where models (including American celebrity Kim Kardashian and British model Naomi Campbell) carried the bag along the runway while playing music for an audience probably unprepared.
The limited-edition collection includes just 20 bags in total, each of which has been sandblasted, anodized and polished by hand at Bang & Olufsen's aluminum factory in Struer, Denmark, to a satin finish. The bag was then shipped to Balenciaga's studio in Italy, where its interior was completed.
Opinion: at least it will carry the sound quite well...
I'm sorry people. Either way, said sound can apparently be adjusted via a set of controls under the grip, while the battery life is rated at 18 hours, and naturally there's etched Balenciaga and Bang & Olufsen logos. lasered to the top of each speaker bag, which comes in your choice of black or silver.
Models at the Balenciaga show also wore futuristic black, ink-dyed, hand-molded face shields made in collaboration with Mercedes-Benz (a company clearly in a friendly mood: the automaker recently collaborated with Master & Dynamic to produce F1-esque headphones) to hide his identity.
Why am I so... disappointed? It looks too kitsch for Bang & Olufsen; an ambitious brand known for creating some of the most intriguing and talented AV products on the market. Check out the gorgeous Beoplay H95 headphones, a beautiful book-shaped wireless speaker, a stunning 48-inch OLED TV and the unforgettable Beosound Edge, a stunning speaker inspired by the humble sterling coin, to see what I mean.
I really doubt you'll be able to cram too much of your material possessions into what Balenciaga calls a "true hybrid product," and as a functional bag, it's also likely to be heavy.
What I'm saying is that this Bang & Olufsen x Balenciaga Bluetooth speaker is hands down the weirdest collaboration of the year and maybe just one of those partnerships that just won't stand the test of time.
Then again, Karl Lagerfeld is famous for saying “Fashion is the last step before pantyhose”, so who am I to say?
