Christine Quinn’s French Fry Purse Is My Favorite Part of ‘Selling Sunset’

Selling Sunset is back, which means viewers are in for multi-million dollar California homes, workplace romances, and the feuds and squabbles of some of LA’s elite real estate agents. That’s all great and binge-able, but it’s not why I’ll be watching this season. I’m tuning in for Christine Quinn’s outrageous looks—and starting right from the season premiere, she delivers big time.

Quinn has embraced her role as the Oppenheimer Group’s resident mean girl, and is fond of wearing Cruella De Vil-worthy getups to really hammer home her almost cartoonishly villainous status on the show. Last season, her big fashion moment took the form of a tiny, bejeweled chair that may or may not have been a purse. This time around, she kicks off the season with a new statement piece, one that doesn’t quite top the dadaist highs of the chair purse, but has still proven interesting enough to get the people talking.

Enter the French fry purse.

The bag in question is a bedazzled clutch in the shape of a French fry carton overstuffed with golden spuds. It appears to be from the brand Akira, and retails for a comparatively reasonable $120. (I say comparatively because the chair purse cost $900.)

Notably, this isn’t the French fry purse’s first moment in the sun: Kim Kardashian took a very similar bag for a red carpet stroll at a 2018 auction. Kim’s version was from Judith Leiber, and cost more than $5000 dollars, which makes Christine an icon of thrift, truly getting the look for less. On Selling Sunset, she carries the purse to her first house visit of the season, and pairs it with a Balmain dress in denim and pink houndstooth tweed.

(While the Judith Leiber French fry purse is sadly all sold out, there are other sparkly options for those looking for a statement clutch that costs around the same price as a car down payment. May I recommend the brand’s Stack of Cash purse, designed to look like a glittering pile of billion dollar bills? Andy Warhol, who once wrote that anyone buying a $200,000 painting “should take that money, tie it up, and hang it on the wall,” would be proud!)

More than anything else, it’s fun to watch Christine deploy statement-making fashion to help construct her mean-girl persona. She’s suggested that she’s very aware of the role she plays on the series and has even orchestrated it with wide-eyed intent. “We were on episode eight, and we had absolutely no drama whatsoever, and the producers were worried because we needed a season finale,” she told The Cut ahead of the season four premiere. “I said, ‘You know what? I got this, because if we don’t get another season thanks to you boring bitches, you will never hear the end of it.’ So I fell on my sword and I did what I had to do.”

In a show that specializes in all things bland—homes filled with white walls and furniture, and a cast that spends much of the time being very boring, punctuated with instances of mild drama—Christine is actively building a completely unrelatable character, one based on memorable digs and technicolor styling. She is her own supervillain, and I pretty much only watch to see what she’ll say, and wear, next.