At FIFA World Cup 2026, luxury fashion stepped firmly onto the pitch, with five standout bags turning airport arrivals into runway moments. From Michael Olise’s black Hermès Birkin 40 and Rayan Cherki’s historic Haut à Courroies to Jules Koundé’s Louis Vuitton Reporter, Marcus Thuram’s lime Chanel x Pharrell XXL Flap, and Lamine Yamal’s Chanel C26 tweed tote, football’s style game has never looked sharper.
Football has long had a complicated relationship with fashion. For decades, the sport kept the two at arm’s length, as if style were somehow incompatible with athletic credibility. That argument is now thoroughly over. The FIFA World Cup 2026, hosted across the United States, Mexico, and Canada, has become one of the most significant fashion moments of the year. This year, luxury houses are jostling for tarmac visibility since before that draw was announced. These include Nike paired with Jacquemus on France’s travel wardrobe and Loew signed its first national team deal with Spain. The bags, in particular, have been extraordinary and worth taking a look at. Below is a list of five of the most luxurious bags that made the most noise at FIFA this year.
The Birkin was born from a chance meeting between Jane Birkin and then-Hermès CEO Jean-Louis Dumas on a flight from Paris to London in 1984, when Birkin shared her frustration at not finding a bag that balanced elegance with everyday functionality. From that conversation came the Birkin 40 in calfbox leather, defined by its two rolled handles, flap closure, clou feet, and signature lock and key. When it was first released, it retailed for roughly $2,000. The Birkin 25 cost $9,400 in 2016. It costs $13,500 today, a 44% increase over ten years. The Birkin 40 now retails at $20,300 (approximately Rs 16,95,000), firmly above the $20,000 threshold. Jane Birkin's original prototype sold at auction for over $10 million (approximately Rs 835 crore). Olise carried a large black version to Boston Logan. The image made every fashion round-up within hours.
The Haut à Courroies is the first bag ever made by Hermès, originally designed to carry equestrian boots and saddles. It dates to 1892, predating the Kelly by over four decades and the Birkin by nearly a century. The name translates literally to "high with straps," a reference to its tall, structured trapezoid silhouette and the double straps that run over the top. It is made in Hermès's signature leathers, Togo, Barenia, and Swift among them, and retails from approximately €17,000 (approximately Rs 15,90,000), with exotic skin versions exceeding that considerably. Cherki carried a creamy beige version.
Louis Vuitton's classic Monogram Canvas has been the house's trademark design since it was first introduced in 1896, with the graphic symbols, including the quatrefoils, flowers, and LV monogram, originally created to prevent counterfeiting. The Reporter, a structured crossbody built on that same canvas with an adjustable strap and multiple compartments, was first introduced in the 1990s as a practical messenger for urban everyday use. It retails at approximately $1,190 (approximately Rs 99,000) and is among the quieter, more heritage-coded choices in Louis Vuitton's catalogue. Koundé wore his slung over one shoulder, styled with a Jimi Hendrix T-shirt and jeans.
The Chanel x Pharrell Williams collaboration, launched under Pharrell's creative direction of the house, reimagined the Chanel classic flap in exaggerated proportions, bold colourways, and a looser, more streetwear-adjacent construction. The XXL Flap from the 2024 collection is built on the house's signature quilted leather, scaled up significantly from the original 11.12 size introduced by Karl Lagerfeld in 1983, which itself was a reinterpretation of Coco Chanel's original 2.55 from February 1955. The limited-edition pieces originally retailed in the thousands and now appear on resale sites for considerably more. Thuram carried his in lime green.
Yamal arrived at the Spanish national team's training camp in a Chanel black bouclé tweed jacket with white piping and gold double-C buttons, a large Shopping Tote in hand. The bag belongs to the C26 Métiers d'Art collection, Chanel's annual showcase of its specialist ateliers, presented by creative director Matthieu Blazy in New York in December 2025. Métiers d'Art collections exist to spotlight savoir-faire — tweed, embroidery, feather work, leatherwork — executed at a level where you can physically see the labour: quilting precision, hardware engineering, chain weight, surface treatments that read as just texture from a distance but resolve into hours of technique up close. The Shopping Tote Medium in Black Tweed is finished with gold-tone hardware, the tweed itself woven by Lesage, the Parisian embroidery atelier acquired by Chanel in 2002, and considered one of the last remaining houses of its kind in the world. It retails for IDR 170,000,000 (approximately Rs 8,65,000). On an 18-year-old in jeans at a football training ground, it looked completely effortless, which is either the best or the most expensive thing you can say about a bag.
The FIFA World Cup 2026 runs from June 11 to July 19, 2026, across the United States, Canada, and Mexico.