SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 1.6.2026 UPDATED
Who would have thought that the utilitarian Trader Joe’s shopping bag would become a global fashion statement?
Sunday afternoon I was in my neighborhood Trader Joe’s and talked with a Clerk about TJ’s shopping bags becoming a global fashion item. The Clerk told me that people are lined up at the front door each morning at 8AM to purchase the shopping bags. There were none on the shelf Sunday afternoon.
Never having owned a car the TJ bag is essential. A couple of years ago I replaced a well traveled pair of TJ’S totes. The clerk told me I should keep the old pair. I declined. She was onto something. I could have sold them on Ebay.
On a day when Warmonger Felon Trump further disrupted the World order with his criminal kidnapping of the Venezuelan President and the home town 49ers were beat down by the Seattle Seahawks a little levity was appropriate to escape the Winter doldrums.
What do they say??? Shopping is good therapy. So, grab your Trader Joe’s bag and make a trip to the store.
I take my Trader Joe’s shopping bag on San Francisco public transit as I mingle with the folks as I carry home groceries from the nearby Trader Joe’s outlet. I am not alone. I see these large cotton canvas bags all over San Francisco. They’re sturdy and essential.
Now this essential item has reached the pages of the Wall Street Journal.
Excerpted from The Wall Street Journal 1.3.2026
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.
In London, Holly Davies initially thought her Trader Joe’s tote would go unnoticed. The podcast producer snagged the bag for $2.99 at the grocery store on a trip to Washington, D.C.
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.
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.
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.
Lee's Perspective 