How a $3 grocery bag became an international status symbol

Back in the U.K., where she grew up and lives, she figured it would simply be another anonymous canvas carrier. But whenever she spotted another tote in the wild—on the Tube, outside a pub, swinging from someone’s shoulder on a crowded street—she felt a spark of recognition.

“I always make an effort to smile at the person carrying it, which isn’t a super common thing to do in London," Davies said. “I feel a bit of a kindredness with other Trader Joe’s tote carriers."

Here was someone else connected to America, she assumed, probably another like-minded dual citizen or expat. Then the sightings multiplied. Something else was happening.

The Trader Joe’s tote, which sells for $2.99 in the U.S., has joined the ranks of geographically specific status bags like those from London’s Daunt Books or Paris’s Shakespeare and Company. In addition to London, they’re being carried in Seoul, Melbourne, Australia, and Tokyo. Because there are no Trader Joe’s stores abroad, the bags are listed on resale platforms like Depop, eBay and Korea’s Karrot market for up to $10,000—with some eBay listings reaching $50,000.

“Trader Joe’s bags represent a limitation: Trader Joe’s aren’t in every city and aren’t on every corner," Michelle Gabriel, a lecturer at the Yale School of the Environment, said. “That already imparts a scarcity that, in a world of easy, accessible overconsumption, can be used in service of status."

When asked about the bag’s global reach, Trader Joe’s distanced itself from the resale phenomenon. The company “neither condones nor supports the reselling of [its] products" and “does all [it] can to stop the practice," said Nakia Rohde, the company’s public relations manager. The current canvas totes are manufactured in Vietnam and sold exclusively through Trader Joe’s own locations. Rohde added: “We appreciate that our customers connect with our products, wherever they are in the world."

The scarcity isn’t limited to international markets. In the U.S., the totes sell out quickly at stores, fueling a domestic frenzy. Elin Strong, a writer based in Southern California, first spotted one on the arm of a “very chic" stylist friend at a playdate. “Even though she was using it to store dried mango and sanitizer wipes for her toddler, it still looked effortlessly cool," she said. She tried to snag one herself, but kept missing out. One of her friends buys the maximum number—25 bags—each time they’re restocked and gives them as gifts.

Davies investigated the bag for the Articles of Interest newsletter, published on Substack by the podcast of the same name in October 2025, exploring what the bag signals to its holders. One London carrier told Davies she assumes “most people who use a Trader Joe’s tote are quite liberal and cultured," while another described the bag as “very lib, almost ‘champagne socialist’-coded."

Nearly everyone Davies interviewed abroad presumed Trader Joe’s has liberal connotations—though she’s learned this doesn’t necessarily track in the U.S. itself. “I think the Trader Joe’s tote can be viewed as far enough away from the ultra-capitalist, consumerist side of the U.S. that some people from the U.K. particularly dislike," Davies said.

While Trader Joe’s is objectively a massive corporation—the chain operates 618 stores in the U.S.—it doesn’t feel like a big-box store. For Davies, hand-painted signage and packaging “that looks like it was designed by a circus mouse" create an impression of independence.

“The logo hasn’t gone through the same process of oversimplification that a lot of corporations have done, so it reads as home-grown," she said. This carefully cultivated impression, combined with the bag’s visual similarity to the classic L.L. Bean Boat and Tote, gives it enough distance from overtly corporate American brands that international carriers can embrace it without feeling complicit, Davies said.

In Seoul, Johanna Quinn, an Australian designer, kept spotting women in their 30s and 40s on the subway carrying the red-logoed bags. Then she started seeing the bags listed on Coupang, Korea’s primary e-commerce app. Quinn understood the appeal immediately: “As someone who owns multiple the New Yorker totes and has never been to the U.S., I can see the appeal of sporting iconic totes that are location-specific," she said. “I also proudly wear an Aldi T-shirt to support my favorite supermarket from afar."

Annie Wilson, a San Francisco-based corporate retail consultant who has worked with brands such as Wayfair and Benefit Cosmetics, recently gifted her own tote to a friend in Melbourne, “because she said she never sees them in Melbourne and wanted to be the first," she said.

The Trader Joe’s tote joins a long line of American cultural exports that appeal abroad—from Supreme to the NBA. Jay Choyce Tibbitts, a New York City-based social media strategist whose analysis of the bags went viral on TikTok, said the tote’s international popularity shows that, “Even while America is having some shaky international relations and diplomatic conflict, the country is still being discussed on a global scale and championed for its cultural exports."

Davies recently traveled to the U.S. from London with marching orders from a few friends: “I’ve got to bring them back a Trader Joe’s tote."