A friend sends me a photo of a packet of pak choi with a large Gucci label on it alongside a rather lovely Louis Vuitton box with some pretty cakes in it.
Later she sends another of some apples and bread spilling out of a Chanel bag. The pictures have, she tells me, come from a contact in Shanghai — where luxury goods companies have apparently been helping out their locked-in VVIP customers by sending them the kind of food it is hard to find elsewhere. (Hermes is apparently good for meat).
The bags the food comes in then have a secondary use — they can be used for a bit of lockdown showing off. Social media is full of the news that some Shanghai residents have been signalling their access (and past buying habits) by using bags from Prada and Chanel to put their Covid tests out for collection by their front doors.