admin In a few days, New York Fashion Week will devour the Big Apple once again, kicking off a blitz of runway shows, afterparties, and amorphous hangs. As always, the GQ squad will be covering the action as it unfolds, firing off takes, dishing goss, and helping you make sense of where menswear is headed next. If you’re trembling with anticipation at the mere thought of it, we’ve secured a tantalizing sneak peek at one major NYFW trend you can expect to see everywhere: the Hulken bag, and a lot of it.
Per Roxanne Behr, GQ’s eagle-eyed global creative director, Hulken’s glossy wheelable totes are ubiquitous on the fashion circuit, a perennial favorite of photographers, stylists, and PR machers who are quite sure you’re not on the guest list, thank you very much. Behr says she sees the shiny silver version everywhere: “On the street, on fashion shoot sets, wheeling in and out of TheRealReal.” (Gulp.)
You might recognize Hulken’s conspicuously gargantuan roller bags from the checkout line at Trader Joe’s or the aisles of your local laundromat. Which sort of begs the question: what the hell are they doing at fashion week?
The same thing they’re doing at the grocery store, apparently—schlepping a bunch of unwieldy stuff to and from wherever their handlers need to go. For the grizzled, caffeine-addled industry vets behind the scenes, NYFW is a marathon-like gauntlet of appointments, fittings, and casting calls across multiple neighborhoods and boroughs. When you’re hustling to get an entire collection from the tailor to the show venue, or you’re lugging a studio’s worth of photography equipment over to the latest glitzy hotspot, an uber-practical, ultra-durable carry-all is a godsend.
The Hulken bag first hit the market in 2020, at the onset of the pandemic. Its easy-to-clean polypropylene exterior and stainless steel wheels, which glide like a brand new S-Class, quickly endeared it to shoppers wary of jankier store-provided carts. Each of its three sizes are laughably cavernous and almost impossibly lightweight, a win-win for anyone struggling to cram a change of clothes, six different charges, and a phalanx of increasingly elaborate invitations into a wimpy canvas tote.
In other words, it’s exactly the kind of no-frills, utilitarian hauler that telegraphs the biggest fashion week flex of them all: You’re too busy to port around anything less capable. What’s more New York than that?
