• by Sarah Mahoney , Staff Writer @mahoney_sarah, September 1, 2022

Just in time for Fashion Week, handbags are rocketing back into orbit. To remind people that everyone deserves a seasonal style upgrade, Kate Spade, Longchamp and Gucci are just a few luxury brands looking for a little more attention.

Kate Spade is going global, sauntering into the metaverse for the first time. But it’s also staying local, with large-scale out-of-home ads at New York City landmarks.

Festooned with polka dots, bright plaids, roses and leopard prints, the new campaign invites people inside a New York City apartment building, where the residents are having a Saturday afternoon open house.

With a video by director Alan Ferguson and photography by Nadine Ijewere, the friendly group shows the value of community as five very different neighbors rally around an amateur artist, a crafty needlepoint queen and a croissant genius (as shown above).

While the townhouse concept has appeared in past ad campaigns, this is its first trip to the metaverse. The Saturday Open House starts life in Web 3.0, with early access to Fall styles., downloadable social media filters and exclusive content. And it will also have a Kindness Wall, inspired by its partnership with the Born This Way Foundation’s #BeKind21 campaign.

People can access the townhouse, which will live through October, by downloading QR codes from the outdoor ads and in Kate Spade stores.

Out-of-home includes Times Square, Grand Central Station and a subway car shuttle between the two.

Longchamp, another luxury bag standby, is also rolling out new creative. A campaign called “Les Filles” showcases the Box-Trot, its new next-generation handbag. It centers around two Parisian friends working their way through their bucket lists.

And Gucci has gone straight for the exquisitely strange, with “Exquisite,” a meticulous homage to late director Stanley Kubrick -- from “2001: A Space Odyssey” to “A Clockwork Orange” to those terrifying twins from “The Shining.”