Why are Russian influencers chopping up their Chanel bags with scissors?

Russian Model, Victoria Bonya, chops up her Chanel bag

The uber fashion house has become a scapegoat for Russian celebrities and influencers to protest luxury fashion’s ‘discriminating’ economic sanctions agains the Russian people.

Russian influencers are cutting up their Chanel handbags on social media in angry protest over restrictions imposed by the luxury French fashion label that mean they can no longer buy its products abroad. Chanel confirmed to the BBC this week that it was halting sales of its clothes, perfume, accessories and other items to customers who were intending to use the products in Russia, as a response to President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. 

According to BBC, the French fashion house confirmed in a statement that it was complying with a ban initiated by Switzerland and the EU pertaining to the sale of luxury items to people who intend to use them in Russia.

“This is why we have rolled out a process to ask clients for whom we do not know the main residency to confirm that the items they are purchasing will not be used in Russia,” Chanel said. Chanel has already shut its stores within Russia, as have many other brands.

Chanel’s ban enraged Russian influencers like Victoria Bonya and Marina Ermoshkina, who have 9.3M and 300k followers respectively, so they are now filming themselves destroying their Chanel purses. They are now accusing the fashion house of “Russophobia” and the attempt to “cancel Russia.”

This week, Anna Kalashnikova, a singer and actor with 2.4 million followers on Instagram, posted about her own experience with “discrimination”, when she walked into a Chanel store in Dubai, discovering that the brand no longer sold its bags to Russians. As a response, the influencers have made a symbolic gesture to the French fashion house by cutting up their handbags with kitchen scissors and garden shears.

Russian TV presenter, Marina Ermoshkina slices up her Chanel bag 

 “I have to say that Chanel does not respect its clients, so why do we have to respect Chanel?” Bonya said to her 9.3 million followers, standing in a sun-dappled balcony before slicing a black leather purse in half and flinging it emphatically out of frame. If this rhetoric sounds familiar, that's because similar words have been spoken by Putin, claiming penalties were being put in place irregardless of the war in Ukraine, with the sole purpose of suffocating “the development of Russia… just because we exist”. 

Kalashnikova, who said Chanel’s actions were “supporting fascism” and Elvina Borovkova, a 24-year-old social media star, who said it was impossible that Russian soldiers could be raping Ukrainian women because “Russian women are the most beautiful women in the world”. “Do you really think they need Ukrainian women? It’s scary to even touch them, full of venereal diseases,” she said in a now-viral video.

As a French company, Chanel has agreed to comply with the European Union’s export ban on luxury goods. But beyond closing its Russian boutiques and complying with EU-regulated trade sanction laws, Chanel is also one of many luxury brands that have been screening shoppers, with some customers reporting that they have been asked to sign a document stating that they will not take their purchases to Russia. Given the atrocities that the Kremlin continues to inflict onto Ukrainian citizens, the “protest” and “plight” of these influencers rings dissonant.

This kind of act has been employed as protest before, like when people removed the Swoosh from their Nike clothes and destroyed sneakers in reaction to Colin Kaepernick’s Nike campaign. As journalist Tim Blanks noted, these individuals seem “too busy chopping up her handbag to protest the chopping up of innocent men, women and children in Ukraine. The Putinistas, both in Russia and in the West (that’s you, fucking Tucker), coughing up their fur balls of faux rage from their pinnacles of privilege, are truly the most execrable examples of the species.”

DJ Katya Guseva carves up her Chanel handbag

Russian influencers staying safe in luxurious places all around Europe don’t seem to acknowledge the propaganda of their home country and even spread it by showing no compassion for the people of Ukraine reeks of the hypocritical privilege of oligarchy. One can hardly blame Chanel for not wanting to be associated with such soulless vapidity. The brand clearly understands the power of image and is choosing to dissociate itself from influencers spreading propaganda.