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At first glance, Erling Haaland is exactly what a footballer is meant to be. Six-foot-four, twenty-five years old, Manchester City's most feared striker and Norway's national talisman. He has scored 47 goals in 39 competitive matches for Norway and 100 Premier League goals in a record-breaking 111 games. When he arrived in North Carolina at the start of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the world was watching for the same reason it always watches Haaland: to see what he would do to the opposition.
But the story of Haaland's World Cup, off the pitch, has quietly become one of the most fascinating fashion narratives in recent memory. Because Haaland did not step off Norway's team jet with a duffel bag or a monogrammed carry-on. He stepped off holding a Hermès Haut à Courroies 50 in the special "Endless Road" edition — a bag whose bone-colored leather is patchworked with a scene of blue-gray mountains and a winding highway, so quietly extraordinary that fashion writers recognized it instantly. Estimated resale value: around $45,500. It is one of at least seven Hermès bags in his collection.
Haaland's preference within the Hermès universe is telling. Rather than the classic Birkin favored by most collectors, he gravitates almost exclusively toward the Haut à Courroies — commonly known as the HAC — the taller, wider forebear of the Birkin. Originally designed in the late nineteenth century to carry equestrian equipment, the HAC predates the Birkin itself and remains the true bloodline of the maison's leather goods. It is a travel bag by design, which is precisely why it suits a footballer whose life is spent between airports, hotels, and stadiums. It is also, at his height, one of the few luxury bags that visually reads at his scale.
The collection tracked by fashion observers is remarkable in its rarity. Alongside the "Endless Road," he owns a black Caban Togo Multipockets HAC Birkin 50 — a version of which sold at Christie's in 2024 for $60,480 — with utility pockets integrated into the classic silhouette. He carries an Evercalf Toile Cargo HAC 40 in green canvas twill, valued at approximately $50,000, whose exterior cargo pockets give the maison's silhouette a modern, utilitarian twist. The HAC 40 Rock, inspired by biker jackets and finished with multiple zippers, is another favorite. He has been photographed with a black-and-orange checkerboard H Togo HAC Casaque Birkin 40 that sold at Sotheby's the year before he began carrying it, valued between $25,000 and $33,000 depending on condition.
He does not limit himself to the HAC. Earlier this year, at Manchester City's Champions League fixture against Real Madrid, he was photographed carrying a Kelly 35 in black Togo — a more classical silhouette than his usual choices, worn with the same quiet confidence. He also owns a Kelly Dépêches 25. And in one of the most quietly extraordinary fashion moments of the tournament, he was spotted with his girlfriend Isabel Haugseng Johansen's Birkin 25 tucked inside his HAC 50 — described by one fashion observer as being "doubled up on Birkins."
Johansen herself is part of the collection's story. She and Haaland have been together since 2021, grew up in the same Norwegian town of Bryne, played on the same childhood football team, and welcomed their son in December 2024. Last year, Haaland reportedly acquired for her the Hermès Birkin 25 Himalaya Niloticus Crocodile — the maison's most legendary exotic edition, its pale gradient leather designed to evoke the snow of the Himalayas — for approximately $440,000 at auction. It is the kind of gift that speaks less to spectacle than to a very specific, very Hermès-fluent form of romance.
What makes Haaland's collection culturally interesting is the quiet way it disrupts the assumptions still surrounding luxury handbags. For decades, the Birkin has been coded as a hyper-feminine object — a status symbol tied to a specific vision of glamour. Haaland's presence in that world, with a collection more considered than most fashion editors', has become part of a broader recalibration in how male athletes engage with luxury.
He is not alone at the tournament. Argentina's Lionel Messi travels with a pocket-festooned Cargo HAC 40. Dutch defender Virgil van Dijk has been photographed with a putty-gray HAC. France's Rayan Cherki arrived in the United States with an oversized Kelly Maxi. Marcus Thuram carried a bright green suede Chanel maxi flap from the maison's Pharrell Williams collaboration. The French national team stepped off their plane with a small parade of HACs, Chanels, and Louis Vuittons in tow.
That the HAC was originally designed for men who rode horses — for equestrian utility, not evening wear — makes its journey to a footballer's arm in 2026 feel less like a subversion of tradition than a quiet return to it. Haaland's collection is, in its way, a rediscovery of what these bags were always meant to be: functional, exquisite, made to travel.
As the final rounds approach, the world will be watching for what Haaland does with the ball. But by now, the world is also watching for what he carries as he walks off the plane.
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