It's amazing that people are shocked to suddenly find out that a whole market segment called "luxury" exists and is somehow a thing.
This is a bag. Functionally equivalent to something you find at Walmart for $15. The people who buy these generally only use them a handful of times. It costs $31,000. It is luxury.
I know someone who owns this. I can count the number of times they intend to wear this (once) before throwing into a closet. It costs $16,000. It is luxury.
The people who buy these make so much money that they are literally richer when they leave the store after buying bags of this stuff than when they entered it.
Believe it or not, the fashion company doesn't really make any money selling a $31,000 bag or a $16,000 dress. They make the real money from the $2,000 version of the same bag or a $600 similarly-styled dress. However, the luxury version of those items created a halo around the lower-cost items that elevated their value in the same way that is making people here say "haha those rich suckers, I got my gold Apple watch for only $1,000" or "I paid $350 for basically the same thing". That's exactly what Apple was hoping you would say. They know that when you pass by an Apple Store, you'll step in to take a look at that ridiculous Edition model that you've heard about. What they're hoping is that while you're there, you'll notice how nice the SS one looks and want to try it on. They don't really care if they only sell 10 of these things; just the amount of free advertising, articles and discussion around the Edition more than paid for the cost of it's development.

This is a bag. Functionally equivalent to something you find at Walmart for $15. The people who buy these generally only use them a handful of times. It costs $31,000. It is luxury.

I know someone who owns this. I can count the number of times they intend to wear this (once) before throwing into a closet. It costs $16,000. It is luxury.
The people who buy these make so much money that they are literally richer when they leave the store after buying bags of this stuff than when they entered it.
Believe it or not, the fashion company doesn't really make any money selling a $31,000 bag or a $16,000 dress. They make the real money from the $2,000 version of the same bag or a $600 similarly-styled dress. However, the luxury version of those items created a halo around the lower-cost items that elevated their value in the same way that is making people here say "haha those rich suckers, I got my gold Apple watch for only $1,000" or "I paid $350 for basically the same thing". That's exactly what Apple was hoping you would say. They know that when you pass by an Apple Store, you'll step in to take a look at that ridiculous Edition model that you've heard about. What they're hoping is that while you're there, you'll notice how nice the SS one looks and want to try it on. They don't really care if they only sell 10 of these things; just the amount of free advertising, articles and discussion around the Edition more than paid for the cost of it's development.