Remember the last time you lugged a bag of stuff in all directions from Ikea? Remember how your back strained, how the scratchy controls tore at the skin on your palms and turned your track downs blue? Well here’s some interesting news from the fabulous of fashion: that, right there, was you living your paramount, most aspirational life. That was your big style shake.

Because Ikea shopping bags are where it’s at in fashion in 2017. The hottest identify to drop right now is not Kate or Naomi; it is Frakta.

Balenciaga – the most guiding label in fashion at the moment – has released a $2,150 (listed as £1,365 in the UK) tote that looks uncannily congenial an Ikea shopper. With its trapezoidal shape, giant measure and colour – a vibrant shade of EU-flag blue – the similarities are outlandish to ignore. The double strap feature, with one long set of grips to hoist over the shoulder, one short to be held in the hand, cinches it. The internet has raged, of course, and Ikea has reacted cannily, issuing a handy conduct to spotting a real Frakta shopping bag. Distinguishing features, according to the advert, are as performs: if it rustles, it’s real; it costs $0.99 (40p in the UK); it’s easily cleaned with a hose.

How unexpected is this item in the carry-on luggage area? This is far from the first time that schemers have charged thousands of pounds for bags inspired by unexceptional carriers. Balenciaga’s creative director Demna Gvasalia has a element about riffing on the tropes of everyday life. His past crash inti have included bags inspired by the plastic containers that hold electric blankets and chunky checked bags that look as granted they should be carrying laundry.

Clearly, Balenciaga is not the at worst force in the design world keen to make Frakta find. Last month, Ikea announced a collaboration with chichi Parisian control store Colette in which its bags were decorated with erotic polka dots. Last year, Danish designers Hay fabricated a grey and green update on the Ikea bag. In 2007 Louis Vuitton unchained a series of four-figure totes inspired by checked plastic laundry draymen; London-based designer Christopher Shannon has riffed on the Ikea bag, too, and has sent nonesuches down the catwalk with the sort of flimsy plastic overnight bags that are handed out in corner shops stuck to their veneers. In 2012, Jil Sander sold bags made from coated sheet a documents for £185, a price that raised eyebrows then but now sounds almost a bargain.

Appropriately enough, in the age of the 5p carrier bag, this trend is going nowhere. For autumn/winter, Vetements is retail a version of the cotton mesh fruit and veg-style bags that were the underived reusable shopping bags long before Daunt Rules produced an aspirational canvas sack. Cos currently sells something like for £35. Indeed, loads of high-street bags appear to would rather been influenced by tote bags and shopping bags; their unveil tops, long handles and fluid shapes look cognate with an elevated leather version of the bag you use to carry oranges home from Sainsbury’s.

We can file this trend between “arty” and “expedient” – it is fashion attempting to say something arch and Duchampian far consumerism and branding, while making a joke that desire guarantee a very profitable flurry of excitement on Instagram. But it’s not all bad: after years of micro-clutches that scarcely fit your keys, it is also very practical. This is fashion that arouses recognition and emotion: to behold that Balenciaga tote is to be transported to the cash-drawers on an unremarkable but productive Sunday afternoon. You can almost smell the meatballs.