Labubus are taking over the internet – and they've just been restocked here
Fuzzy, mischievous-looking, fang-toothed characters dangling from luxury bags, Labubus are the bizarre fashion trend that has the internet divided. Despite being sold out for weeks, the dolls are now being restocked thanks to TikTok Shop's summer sale.
Mainly sold by the Chinese toy company Pop Mart, the designer toy-turned-fashion collectables are incredibly popular. A queue outside the Birmingham Pop Mart store was so long that it made headlines, and rare Labubus are selling for more than £1,000 each. A few weeks ago, a child-sized Labubu sold for more than $150,000.
You can now even rent Labubus for upwards of £4 a day on platforms like By Rotation (alongside luxury accessories from the likes of Chanel and Hermès).
Despite recent fandom, the Labubu character isn't new. It was designed in 2015 by Hong Kong-born illustrator Kasing Lung, as part of his collection of characters, The Monsters, inspired by Dutch and Nordic folklore.
Leaning into maximalism, Labubus bring a pop of personality and fun to any outfit, so it's easy to see the appeal. Their popularity can be traced back to Lisa from the K-pop band BlackPink. Having shared Labubus on her Instagram stories, the singer confirmed her love of Pop Mart during a blind unboxing for Vanity Fair, and even referred to Labubu as her 'baby' when interviewed for Teen Vogue.
Since then, Rihanna has been seen adorning her Louis Vuitton bag with a lychee berry Labubu, and Dua Lipa has also jumped on the trend. Emma Roberts also took to Instagram to open a whole blind box. Now, the charms can often be seen dangling from Birkins and Miu Miu bags, lending them a fun and colourful twist, though, of course, you don't need a designer bag to enjoy the trend.
Labubu dolls are often sold in 'blind boxes'. These contain a toy chosen at random from the series, so you won't know which one you've bought until you open the box. As well as regular designs, there are also so-called 'secret edition' Labubus, which are especially rare and sought-after by collectors. The latest is the Big Into Energy series (£17.50, Popmart.com), which dropped this spring. To give you an idea of scale, the toys are around 6in in size (about the same size as an iPhone 16).
With a surge of interest in bag charms – such as Coach hanging cuddly toys from its bags at its New York Fashion Week show – the hashtag Labubu has appeared more than one million times on TikTok.Unsurprisingly, the toys sold out fast. But now, TikTok have announced a restock as part of its huge sale on TikTok shop - here's everything you need to know.
Where to buy Labubus in the UK
Labubu figures are available on the Pop Mart platform, in Pop Mart shops or via the retailer's TikTok shop. It's been near-impossible to get your hands on a doll online, but now TikTok has announced a summer sale with a restock of the viral Labubus.
New drops of the bag charms are set to be available today (27 June) between 2pm and 7pm, but other dolls from the range are currently available on the PopMart shopfront.
You might find you have more luck buying the toys at other retailers, such as StockX, Depop, eBay and the Pop Mart store on Amazon. However, you need to be wary when shopping elsewhere, as counterfeit versions (jokingly referred to as 'Lafufus') are common on third-party sites.
It pays to research the differences between the fakes and the real thing. For instance, collectors suggest looking for signs such as the brightness of the packaging, whether the dolls have a Pop Mart stamp on their foot, the number of teeth the dolls should have (nine), and the presence of a QR code on the back of the packaging, which should take you to the official Pop Mart website.
There are also several Pop Mart shops in the UK, so if you'd rather buy a Labubu in person, you can head to the locations in Manchester, Birmingham, London, and Cambridge. Labubus are also available from Pop Mart's vending machines, known as Robo Shops, which can be found in London and Reading.
With the fashion rental market booming, it's perhaps no surprise that you can now rent Labubu dolls for £3 a day. The trend may not last, so renting a doll for a specific outfit might be more cost-effective than buying your own Labubu – you might not be as keen to hang a doll off your bag once summer is over.
Leading rental platform By Rotation has a variety of dolls to rent, starting at £3 a day (Byrotation.com). Hurr has been slower to jump on the trend; at the time of writing, the platform only has one doll to rent (from £22, Hurrcollective.com).
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Birmingham City's Riya Mannu inspired by Bend it like Beckham
Professional footballer Riya Mannu has said she was inspired to take up the sport by her favourite film, Bend It Like 18-year-old is the first South Asian woman to play league football for Birmingham City made her debut for the club this season, and said she was trying to be a role model for young players who may follow said the lack of role models when she was younger was partly why the film meant so much to her. She said: "It's my favourite film for a number of reasons, because it shows the South Asian culture in a positive way and her [Jess, played by Parminder Nagra] parents actually do support her eventually and it shows that parents actually do support South Asian young added that she could not have become a footballer without the strong support network around her, thanks to her family."My club have been great - the only worry for me was just playing football and just scoring goals and just playing it because I love the sport." she spoke to presenter Naga Munchetty as part of BBC Radio 5 Live's Names Will Be Made from Loughborough University, the home of the new Women in Sport Research and Innovation Hub, it brought together more than 30 elite athletes, rising stars, and leading experts for an in-depth exploration of women's sport."At 5 Live, we're passionate about giving women's sport the platform it deserves," Controller Heidi Dawson said."Names Will Be Made Live is a chance to amplify the voices driving change, challenging outdated thinking, and inspiring the next generation." Follow BBC Birmingham on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
The Guardian
6 hours ago
- The Guardian
Edward Burtynsky: ‘My photographs are like Rorschach tests'
Few if any photographers have done more than Edward Burtynsky to shape our view of the large-scale industrial production that is a constant, ever-expanding part of the capitalist system. Since the 1980s, he has created more than a dozen multiyear series, tackling extractive industries like mining and oil refining in India, China and Azerbaijan, traveling to such disparate places as Western Australia, Chile's Atacama desert and the so-called ship graveyards of Bangladesh. Often taken from high in the sky, his photos offer views of industrial landscapes that attend to color and pattern with a sophisticated eye reminiscent of abstract expressionism, while also forcing us to contend with the devastating transformations to the natural world required to sustain our way of life. Burtynsky's new show at the International Center of Photography in New York, titled The Great Acceleration, brings together some 70 photographs from a lifetime behind the lens. It seeks to offer a fitting survey of a masterful photographic career, and it debuts the largest photographic mural that Burtynsky has ever done. His relationship with the medium began when he was about 12, when he got his first camera. As a young child, he spent hour upon hour painting alongside his father, who had hoped to become an artist but ended up working in factories. After he learned to painstakingly sketch landscapes and paint with oils, the ease of photographs was a revelation. 'I just realized how in one fraction of a second I can create a landscape – just, boom, it's there,' Burtynsky told me. 'I loved how it was a modern, fast way to get your image, and I loved the darkroom, watching the image emerge.' Similarly, Burtynsky's relationship with the industrial world that has become his subject goes back to his formative years – originally trained as a tool and die maker, he came of age working within factories, seeing first-hand just how dirty, loud and dangerous they really were. 'When I saw the scale of industry, as a young 18-year-old working in these places,' Burtynsky said, 'I could tell that if we were going to become this population of all this growth that they were projecting, then all of this was just going to amplify, this all was just going to get bigger and more insane.' Turning away from such a life, Burtynsky began to study the graphic arts, and after a well-timed push from one of his instructors, he made the decision to receive formal instruction in photography. After spending so much time around heavy industry, he said, it was a revelation: 'All of a sudden, I'm exposed to the whole history of art, and the whole history of music, and the whole history of photography.' It was in school that Burtynsky got exposure to major influences like Eadweard Muybridge, Carleton Watkins, Caspar David Friedrich and painters of the New York school, particularly Jackson Pollock. It was there that he also began to develop his distinctive way of seeing the world. 'I really liked the kind of field painting, the compression of space, the gesture, the color fields, in abstract expressionism,' he said. 'So I started doing landscapes, but I said: 'I'm not just going to go out into the forest and do cliches like anybody else. I'm going to go and try to do Jackson Pollocks with a large-format camera. I'm going to try to attune my eye so I can find really complex spaces in nature that are almost like gesture paintings.'' In no small part because of that painterly eye, Burtynsky imbues his work with an undeniable beauty, a fact that has sometimes made critics uneasy. Shots like that of a enormous stepwell in Rajasthan, or the Chino mine in Silver City, New Mexico, are mesmerizing in their intricacy, their arrangement of color and the hypnotic way that Burtynsky has framed the innumerable lines within. If his photographs of environmental destruction are gorgeous, Burtynsky defends them on the ground that this pleasingness evokes the curiosity and engagement that leads to potentially fruitful dialogue. 'There are all sorts of issues that start to rise up. Like: are you aestheticizing the destruction of the planet?' he said. 'Well, that's not how I'm looking at it. But maybe. I'm really trying to find a visual language that has a painterly or surreal quality to it that shows the world we've evolved in a way that makes people engage with it, versus saying: 'That's just a banal picture of something that I'm not interested in.'' Burtynsky is clear about the fact that his images are meant to be not didactic but enigmatic, entry points and not endpoints. Although it is difficult to look at shots such as a wasteland full of discarded tires or a mountainside honeycombed by extractive mining without feeling a gut reaction of shame and eco-anxiety, his photographs are much more than just environmentalist agitprop. The artist takes pride in the many interpretations that his works can hold. 'My photographs are like Rorschach tests,' he said. 'It's like the teacher puts a picture in front of the class and it's like: what did you see? If they see environmental degradation, they see something out of the history of art. If they see something, like, technologically kind of advanced, or some curious way in which we do things as humans, each one of them is a legitimate reading of what they're seeing – the individual completes it. When people tell me about what they see in an image, I get to learn more about them than they probably learn about me.' In addition to delivering some of Burtynsky's most career-defining works, The Great Acceleration also shows lesser-known sides of the photographer – there are two pieces from his student days, a shot from a rarely seen series that he made exploring masculinity via taxidermy workshops, and never-before-shown portraits of individual workers who toil within the built landscapes that he specializes in. 'I would walk through these landscapes with my 2 1/4 camera, and every once in a while I'd see a person and say: 'Can I take your photograph?' It was always an acknowledgement of the sitter in their space, and just another way of showing that these are things that humans are doing,' he said. Burtynsky hopes that shows like The Great Acceleration offer a way to let a wider audience see what is happening in the world. He remains doubtful of art's ability to directly transform how governments and industry use our resources, but he does believe in the value of raising awareness and sparking curiosity. 'Artists are soft power, we're storytellers, we don't have the ability to influence or shape policy. What we can do is raise consciousness, absorb our experience of the world and move it through the medium of our choice. I'm trying to be a kind of conduit into what is happening.' Edward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration is on show at the International Center of Photography in New York until 28 September
Daily Mail
7 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Rihanna shows off her growing baby bump in an unbuttoned shirt as she joins partner A$AP Rocky and their one-year-old son Riot at AWGE show during Paris Fashion Week
Rihanna showed off her growing baby bump in an unbuttoned shirt as she joined her partner A$AP Rocky and their son Riot at the AWGE show during Paris Fashion Week. The pregnant hitmaker, 37, arrived for her rapper boyfriend's creative agency's menswear Spring/Summer 2026 show in the French capital on Friday. Rihanna looked effortlessly chic for the show as she arrived in an unbuttoned blue and white striped shirt - which displayed her growing bump. She paired the shirt with a low-rise navy pleated mini-skirt, strappy white stilettos and grey slouch socks, as well as a Dracula tote bag. The singer made her entrance carrying her one-year-old son Riot, who she shares with A$AP, 36, along with their other son RZA, three. Meanwhile A$AP sported a striking black leather zip-up jacket complete with a bright orange inside lining, as well as a baseball cap and a chain. Earlier in the day, the couple put on a stylish display on Friday as they attended the Dior show. Rihanna wore a plunging white shirt and lime green waistcoat, which highlighted her baby bump. She paired the base of her outfit with a brown and blue patterned coat and grey trousers, adding a further splash of colour with brown sunglasses with a clear frame. The star kept it cool by wearing her hair up in a messy up-do, emphasising her extravagant choice of jewellery, which included a striking Marlo Laz pearl necklace - worth a staggering $70,000 (£51,015). A$AP, 36, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, wore a blue shirt and jeans, similarly adding a splash of colour with a red, blue and green Dior tie. The couple's casually stylish outfits were very much in keeping with the theme of the Dior Homme Menswear Ready-to-wear Spring-Summer 2026 show, which took inspiration from the designer's New Look and the tailored suits that characterised it in the 1950s. Rihanna's current pregnancy will see her welcome her third child with the rapper, who she has been in a relationship with since late 2019. The couple welcomed their first son, RZA Athelston Mayers, in May 2022, and their second, Riot Rose Mayers, in August 2023. Meanwhile A$AP sported a striking black leather zip-up jacket complete with a bright orange inside lining, as well as a baseball cap and a chain Rihanna's appearance at the Paris Fashion Week event comes after her father's cause of death was tragically revealed on Thursday. Ronald Fenty died on May 30 at the age of 70 from a combination of acute respiratory failure, pancreatic cancer, and aspiration pneumonia, according to TMZ. Additional causes listed include acute renal failure and acute tubular necrosis, both indicating severe kidney damage. The cause of death comes after reported that the Umbrella singer, who is currently pregnant with her third child, is struggling with the abrupt and heart-wrenching loss of Ronald. Although the pair had a complex relationship, which included periods of both reconciliation and estrangement, an insider told exclusively that the death of the superstar's dad has taken a heavy toll on the superstar (born Robyn Rihanna Fenty). 'Robyn has had a very difficult relationship with her father over the years but his death has hit her like a ton of bricks,' the source said. 'Being pregnant and dealing with A$AP's legal woes have been an emotional roller coaster for her the last few months, and to add to it all, her dad was getting sick, and it started to become too much,' they added. They continued: 'As much as you realise that something like this is occurring, it is still completely heartbreaking and that is where she is right now.' The insider also noted that she 'has forgiven her father and, in death, they got back to a loving father and daughter relationship.' 'But, she is in pain, especially being a mother herself and there being a chance that her kids would have lost their dad to jail a few months back, she feels how important family is,' the source explained. 'This is going to take a long time, and maybe even forever to get over. Sad time in her world right now.' Over the weekend, news broke that Fenty died at age 70 in Los Angeles following a 'brief illness,' according to Starcom Network, a local outlet from Barbados.
