There was a time, not too long ago, when carrying a purse shaped like a baguette felt like a thrilling—even subversive—novelty. It played with the boundaries of everyday objects, subverting expectations of what a luxury accessory could be. Today, however, we hardly bat an eye when we see that Moschino has crafted a trompe l’œil celery purse, or that Big Bud Press has released a hot-dog-and-pretzel-print jumpsuit in collaboration with a Los Angeles bar. How did we get here, and has the intersection of food and fashion finally become a little too much?
Fashion has long found inspiration from the culinary world, but the recent influx of food-fueled prints, graphics, and trompe l’œil accessories that picked up steam during the pandemic has now reached a cultural tipping point. Today, there are truly countless examples of these food motifs and edible, wearable creations available at every conceivable price point.
On the high-end spectrum, Loewe’s summer collection featured a $4,150 lambskin tomato clutch. At the mass-market level, Walmart introduced a line of rotisserie chicken bag-like purses and charms starting at just $5.97. As with many modern consumer trends, this trajectory started in high fashion and steadily worked its way down to mass-market ubiquity. In 2020, a literal chocolate chip cookie went down one of New York Fashion Week’s most buzzed-about fall runways, protruding from a sleek black purse by the designer Puppets and Puppets. The design quickly went viral for its whimsical inclusion of a classic, everyday dessert on a high-end handbag.
The then-emerging brand quickly made food a central theme of its creative vision. Its subsequent collections featured cake-topped aviator caps, Ferrero Rocher heels, and beeswax-sculpted cheese hats—hyperrealistic, absurdist food designs capable of achieving instant social media virality. Prior to working in fashion, Puppets and Puppets designer Carly Mark worked as an artist whose pieces revolved around candies and snacks. As she noted in an interview with Business of Fashion, the Puppets universe felt like the ideal pairing given what she considers food and fashion’s primary motivators: pleasure and money.
During the pandemic, the much-duped “strawberry dress” took over TikTok, while Tombolo Company found a major hit on its hands with its vongole shirt. Debuted in 2019, the seafood-themed shirt found peak popularity in 2021, appearing in Vogue and earning praise as an obvious companion to day-drinking, rooftops, and weekend getaways—in other words, an undeniable status symbol. Designer Katie Kimmel’s T-shirts made chicken-parm enthusiasm akin to being a devout sports fan, and by 2022, "seafood kitsch" was crowned the look of the summer as items like Rachel Antonoff’s popular seafood-tower dress flew off digital shelves.
Why was food so primed to become a dominant motif in clothing at this specific juncture in contemporary culture? One could make the argument that it has deep roots in the millennial optimism years of the 2000s and 2010s, when the concept of the “foodie” was newly minted. Brands printed tongue-in-cheek food- and coffee-related motifs and slogans—with a fervent love of avocados coming readily to mind—on hipster apparel, as the idea that “you are what you eat” developed growing cultural fervor. That period served as a key stepping stone in the evolution toward the far more elaborate and pervasive marketability of food-as-identity we see today.
Cole Poska, a content creator, partner, and creative director at Beyond Studios, notes that food brands possess an asset most traditional companies would kill for: decades of nostalgia, iconic identities, and consumers who are borderline obsessed with them. Poska’s own Instagram feed often reimagines restaurant merchandise just for fun, including viral designs for Cheesecake Factory apparel such as a hat resembling the chain’s iconic brown bread. He points out that people will defend their favorite fast-food order like it is a member of their family, displaying a level of loyalty that is remarkably hard to manufacture. The same fierce allegiance could be said about a preferred martini order or a favorite local taco spot; it has all become a way of telling the world who we are through what we consume.
Yet, widespread fatigue is undoubtedly setting in. In 2024, Bon Appétit posed the blunt question: “Why Does Every Dress Have Pasta and Cocktail Shrimp on It?” As the initial novelty factor of a shrimp-print dress wears off, the inevitable question arises: Will there be any true longevity for these food-as-fashion moments? Digital feeds constantly overflow with products hurriedly designed for flash-in-the-pan viral trends that are quickly destined for a landfill, arguably more so when the object in question prioritizes shock value and cheap gimmicks over genuine function and brand identity.
This phenomenon is undeniably tied to the accelerated speed of modern trend cycles and shortened consumer attention spans. However, as Leah Asmelash observed in coverage for CNN, the rising costs of everyday food also cast an increasingly sinister shadow over food-themed fashion. By 2026, a $425 cardigan emblazoned with oysters carries waning originality compared to its predecessors. At best, it falls into banality; at worst, it evokes a Hunger Games-esque dystopia, subtly signaling to observers that the wearer is not only financially comfortable, but more importantly, well-fed.
In that light, beyond its role as an expression of personal identity, food has arguably transformed into a more potent status symbol than ever before. A sweater touting one’s love of caviar serves as shorthand for their access to and appreciation of luxury, both culinary and otherwise. Conversely, sporting a mass-market Temu version is more akin to wearing a conspicuously faux designer belt.
If it is possible to escape this sense of accelerated-trend-cycle disposability, brands may need to adopt a more subtle approach than simply offering a bag shaped like a giant stick of butter. Sam Salad is the co-founder of Meals, a Los Angeles-based, workwear-inspired apparel company that describes its mission as baking “food culture” into clothing, thereby blurring the lines between the clothes we eat and the food we wear. Utility remains at the forefront for Meals, which offers classic chef pants with a slightly fuller cut, available in basic colors as well as subdued aesthetic homages to blue cheese and watermelon.
When Meals launched in 2019, Salad was selling premium denim along Venice’s Abbot Kinney Boulevard, a hotbed of Instagram-driven food culture and trendy restaurants that helped inspire his own brand. In his view, contemporary design has to translate seamlessly across diverse languages and digital platforms.
Food is hardly a new bedfellow for fashion designers, even if today’s hyper-fast trend cycle has kicked the concept into overdrive. Pointing out that food is a universally understood language, Salad notes that even Issey Miyake once merchandised a pleats collection as miniature omakase sets. He cites that collection among other historic fashion-meets-food moments that he considers successful, such as the iconic lobster dress designed by Salvador Dalí and Elsa Schiaparelli. At the time of its creation in 1937, the dress was considered a scandal, representing a conformity-defying sartorial stance famously worn by Wallis Simpson. Today, heavily devolved mass-market iterations of the concept can easily be found online for a fraction of the cost.
As it stands, one clear path out of corny food-motif purgatory is for brands—whether in fashion or food—to focus less on sheer quantity and much more on narrative storytelling and quality craftsmanship. Salad emphasizes that doing a few things exceptionally well is ultimately enough, pointing to the enduring business model of In-N-Out Burger.
Poska shares a strikingly similar philosophical outlook regarding creative longevity. He explains that he would much rather design a single product that people talk about for an entire year than twenty different items that are forgotten by tomorrow, noting that while the first person to make a candle look like a stick of butter is a creative genius, the hundredth person is simply making a candle.