Why should you spend a few hundred yuan on a canvas or cotton bag when you can get one for free? Talented designers both at home and abroad provide many reasons to keep the bag with witty slogans, patterns and styles that make a bold fashion statement.

Mr Crow by Dong Liang. Photo provided to Shanghai Star

World's highest-paid models of 2014

Price: 222 yuan
Size: 41 cm (H) * 31 cm (W)
Where to buy: 184 Fumin Road, DONG LIANG Shanghai store 富民路184号
021-3469-6926

This shopping bag uses Shanghai hand-woven linen, a material popular in the 1950s and 60s. Once a textile manufacturing hub, Shanghai claims the copyright to this soft, rustic, durable and hypoallergenic material. Machine-woven materials have largely replaced it, but DONG LIANG, the first studio to stock Chinese designers exclusively, has brought it back.

Mr Crow is a famous icon, and adds a cool and eccentric touch to the otherwise old-fashioned bag.

"They nest, feast and proliferate despite being associated with bad luck. That's the attitude for life," says the studio. The bags come in black and white. And the price is also very "Shanghai", as the three digits of the number 222 are read differently in Shanghainese.