It has been credited with bringing the Knicks its first N.B.A. Championship final win in 53 years. It has been blessed by New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani. It even enjoyed the V.I.P. treatment at a celebratory parade. It is now going to be exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum.
Jordyn Woods’s $125 orange, ostrich leather clutch bag has become a talisman for Knicks fans and players, many of whom credit it for buoying the basketball team to victory. Woods, who is engaged to the Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns, wore the purse to all but one of the games in the lead up to the finals on June 13. On the days she brought the bag, which is from her own label, Woods by Jordyn, the Knicks won. (The day the team broke its winning streak was, coincidentally, the day that Madison Square Garden implemented a strict no-bag policy and heightened security for President Trump’s attendance.)
“The bag did its thing tonight,” Towns said in a video he shared on Instagram, referring to the team’s Game 4 win. “We got to put this in the Whitney or the Guggenheim,” he added. The Guggenheim was happy to oblige. The museum is displaying the bag in its halls for five days, starting on Wednesday, running through next Monday. The bag will be exhibited at the museum’s Café Rebay, said Mariët Westermann, the director and chief executive of the Guggenheim Museum.
“This bag came to represent a cultural moment,” Westermann said. “When you think about what museums do, we collect the works that often play those roles, or begin to play it much after they ever were created, like the Mona Lisa.”
The goal is to attract visitors, especially teenagers, who might not spend their afternoon in an art museum, said Westermann.
A representative for Woods declined requests for an interview and pointed to a news release.
The purse, named the Tux Clutch Mini, is hardly the first fashion item to gain cultural cachet for being a lucky charm for athletes and their teams. Michael Jordan famously wore practice shorts from his days at the University of North Carolina under his Chicago Bulls uniform for good luck, as he led the team to six N.B.A. Championships. Tiger Woods leaned on superstition by wearing red shirts on Sundays, which quickly became associated with his victories. He even parlayed the tradition into a fashion brand, Sun Day Red.
But this particular lucky charm came from Woods, 28, a testament to the growing visibility and influence of wives and girlfriends of sports stars, or WAGS, as they’ve come to be called in pop culture.
Earlier in her career, Woods walked as a fashion model for Christian Siriano and Chromat runway shows. She also appeared frequently in the reality series “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” and the spinoff “Life of Kylie,” as a friend of Kylie Jenner. Woods had a public falling out with the family in 2019, after reports of an affair between herself and Tristan Thompson, the father of Khloé Kardashian’s children. Jenner and Woods seem to have reconciled, and Jenner has also become a courtside fixture at Knicks games.
In 2023, Woods launched her shoe and accessory line, Woods by Jordyn. The brand is Woods’s latest fashion venture, after she’d founded SECNDNTURE, a size-inclusive active wear label, in 2018. The purse, which retails for $125, is currently sold out on the brand’s website and is only available for preorder.
The purse’s urban legend has been bolstered by memes and jokes on social media, and has reached people beyond the Knicks fan base, like Jazmyn Creer, 35, a stay-at-home mother and content creator based in Los Angeles.
“We didn’t need the stamp of approval that it was a moment in history, a defining moment for her brand,” said Creer, who is a fan of the Los Angeles Lakers, regarding its display at the Guggenheim. “I would buy the bag,” she said, “but not in orange.”
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