Get ready to secure your bag — Telfar bag, that is. The brand’s wildly popular accessory is restocking in a burgundy shade of “Oxblood” on August 26, an affair guaranteed to draw both excitement and ire from customers.
Telfar’s last restock saw scores of hopefuls take to Twitter to express frustration with the website’s new CAPTCHA security, meant to foil bots operated by resellers. One of the CAPTCHA tests prompted shoppers to fill in the blanks to Telfar’s slogan, “Not for you — for ______ [everyone].”
Another of the site’s anti-bot riddles asked customers to size up a series of cats and draw a box around the largest one. Like the fill-in-the-blank prompt, this also proved too time-consuming for some, interrupting more than a few shoppers’ grail-copping.
Telfar can you give me the answer to the riddle tomorrow. I need this bag 🤣
— Dj (@DJango_06) August 25, 2021
I. Just. Want. A. Telfar. bag. DANG. pic.twitter.com/eg3CnVFVEU
— CARA 🦋 (@Jacaraaa_) August 20, 2021
i was this close to getting a telfar bag this morning. pain pic.twitter.com/uoL5DRvAii
— celine (@ccellisse) August 19, 2021
“The truth is the reason people aren’t getting the bag is not because they have to draw a box around the cat,” Babak Radboy, Telfar’s creative director, told The New York Times. “The reason people can’t get the bag is because any given minute there are tens of thousands more people who want bags than there are bags to get.”
But what about that reCaptcha??? pic.twitter.com/15q4Jhj4fK
— Rae. (@_peace_luv_rae) August 18, 2021
I was sooo CLOSE to getting a red #Telfar mini bag. The nag was IN my cart .Entered my payment method, I made it to the confirm shipping address page and then it said it was sold out @TELFARGLOBAL
…Y'all it was 9:02am pic.twitter.com/Yag6bV1TpS
— Mee_Shebaa (@KMesha_Shebaa) August 19, 2021
Despite the new hoops customers will have to jump through to land the coveted piece, which typically sells out in a matter of minutes, the general attitude towards tomorrow’s drop seems both hopeful and defeated. “Telfar can you give me the answer to the riddle tomorrow. I need this bag,” Twitter user @DJango_06 wrote, ending the post with a crying-laughing face emoji.
“Hope the captcha ain’t on that BS this time around!” another customer commented on Telfar’s Instagram post announcing the restock. Another user simply (and hilariously) conceded, “i choose peace.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/CS9YbV7LobH/
Fan or not, there’s no denying that the Telfar bag has become something of a cultural icon, a status symbol that manages to convey democracy and inclusivity — as well as one’s CAPTCHA-solving ability. Best of luck when they hit Telfar’s site tomorrow.