What is this? A bag for ants?

MSCHF, the creative collective responsible for the big red boots who showed up at New York Fashion Week in February, is thinking smaller for her next accessories launch. Much smaller.

On Wednesday, the group plans to unveil its microscopic bag, a speckled version of the Louis Vuitton bag. Tote OnTheGo. The bag measures 657 by 222 by 700 micrometers, making it smaller than a grain of sea salt and narrow enough to fit through the eye of a needle.

From afar, the fluorescent green bag looks like a radioactive poppy seed or a fragment of a shred. Only when enlarged are its translucent handles and the Louis Vuitton monogram clearly visible. This isn’t the kind of tote bag you can fill up with veggies at the farmer’s market—at most, it could be used to carry a platelet or two.

Kevin Wiesner, creative director of MSCHF, placed the bag as a comment on the impracticality of luxury handbags getting smaller. “I think ‘bag’ is a fun object because it derives from something rigorously functional,” she said in an interview. “But basically it has become jewelry.”

He said that MSCHF aimed to extend that trend to its logical conclusion by removing all utility from the bag, leaving nothing but a brand signifier. “It is the last word in bag miniaturization,” the MSCHF said in a statement.

The bag will be sold in lots this month at Just Friends, an auction hosted by Sarah Andelman, former creative director of Parisian boutique Colette, who closed in 2017and Joopiter, the auction house founded by Pharrell Williams.

Mr. Wiesner said that MSCHF had not asked permission to use the Louis Vuitton logo or design, even though Mr. Williams was newly appointed luxury brand men’s designer. “We’re big on the ‘ask for forgiveness, not permission’ school,” Mr. Wiesner said. (MSCHF settled a lawsuit by Nike in 2021, and a Vans trademark lawsuit is on appeal in federal court.)

But he noted that Mr. Williams had shown a fondness for odd-sized objects: “Pharrell loves big hats, so we made him an incredibly small bag.”

This is all in keeping with MSCHF’s history of provocative shenanigans. Officially Founded in Brooklyn in 2019 by Mr. Wiesner, Gabriel Whaley, Daniel Greenberg, Stephen Tetreault and Lukas Bentel, the collective has long used parody and controversy to comment on the absurdities of consumer culture.

His falls have included $76,000 “Birkinstock” sandals made from Birkin bags (launched without the blessing of Birkenstock or Hermès) and a pair of “Jesus Shoes,” or custom Nike Air Max 97s containing holy water from the Jordan River.

If those projects allowed MSCHF to poke fun at sneaker culture and organized religion, the microscopic bag trains the brand’s keen eye on the luxury bag market.

When it comes to bags, size matters. Consider the “ridiculously spaciousThe Burberry bag considered a misstep in “Succession.” Or the Valentine handbag that Lizzo wore from the American Music Awards red carpet to the meme stratosphereor the buzz microbag that Jacquemus debuted at Paris Fashion Week in 2019.

And while luxury bags are considered desirable in part because some retain their value, new “it” bags are anointing at a breakneck pace, from more minimalist luxury offerings like Mini Cleo de Prada and The “caramel” size Jodie by Bottega Veneta to funkier statement bags like Puppet and Puppet Cookie Bag and Simone Rocha’s micro egg.

MSCHF had been discussing the idea of ​​a miniature handbag for several months when Mr. Whaley presented the idea to Ms. Andelman during a visit to Paris. She jumped at the chance to offer a less obvious bag than those normally available at auction. “Christie’s and Sotheby’s have these Hermès bags,” Andelman said. “It’s become so commonplace, which scares me.”

MSCHF reached out to several industrial manufacturers specializing in biotechnology, which Mr. Wiesner said they found through a combination of questions and Google. Many said no.

The whole process was an exercise in persuasion, Wiesner recalled, “because you go to a production line that makes stents and you ask them to make a sculpture.” Eventually, they got a yes from a manufacturer he declined to name.

The bag was created from resin through a process called two-photon polymerization, a kind of 3D printing for microscopic objects. The OnTheGo style was chosen because its design, a simple rectangle with a prominent logo, could be reproduced legibly at such a small scale, Wiesner said. Its bright color and slight translucency are intended to make it more visible when illuminated from below on a microscope slide. (According to MSCHF, the bag will be sold in a pre-assembled sealed gel box under a microscope with a digital display.)

When samples from the bag arrived a few months ago, they were so small that Wiesner said the team lost a few. But at least one surviving bag will go on display later this month, fixed under a microscope by him, during Men’s Fashion Week in Paris.

On June 19, it will be auctioned off online to a buyer Wiesner hopes won’t treat it too reverently. “I almost hope someone eats it,” he said.