Larissa Labubu is Getting Her Bag
The controversial wife of Green Grape Labubu is ready to reclaim her spotlight - and this time, she’s here to stay.
by Jenny Jaffe
“Has he changed?”
The question hangs in the air as Larissa Labubu sighs, exhaling a pina colada-scented vape cloud, which diffuses into the cushions of her mid-century conversation pit sofa. “Did you know Veronica Lake used to live here?” She asks. “Polly Pocket, too.” She’s changing the subject, but I can’t help but wonder if, in invoking stars known for their alcoholism and tumultuous marriages, she’s also giving me an answer.
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Much has been made of the exploits of Green Grape Labubu, whose notoriety as a plush bag charm has been somewhat dwarfed by his reputation as the enfant terrible of the Exciting Macaron collection – and, more recently, by a DUI, which he controversially sustained while still attached to Kelly Ripa’s Birkin.
Equally infamous, though, is his wife. Born Larissa Litebrite (no relation) in Steamboat Springs, Mrs. Labubu readily admits to a rebellious streak from a young age. “My mother wanted me to work at the family factory factory, which was our factory that made slightly smaller factories. But I always knew that when I grew up, I wanted to be hot enough to get away with being a little off-putting ,” she says, stretching those long, famous legs and using her toes to brush my hair while holding direct eye contact.
In 2009, she used a fake ID to attend a punk show at a local dive bar. A photo of her taken there garnered considerable attention on Pinterest, the then-nascent tastemaker platform. “I didn’t even know someone had taken a picture,” Larissa shrugs. “But the next thing I knew, I had a contract with IMG and I was moving to New York.” She was sixteen.
I’m sure you remember what happens next: Larissa skyrockets to It Girl status, walking runways for Miu Miu and Gucci, appearing in music videos for The 1975 and Twenty One Pilots, and, at nineteen, marrying Pinchers the Lobster, one of the original eight Beanie Babies.
Larissa and Pinchers’ courtship moved at breakneck speed, capturing imaginations from Us Weekly to Tumblr to Toy Collectors’ Weekly. The two were introduced during Furby’s legendary 40th birthday bash at 1Oak by mutual friend Cara Delevigne, and were married at a Manhattan City Hall a mere three weeks later.
“His vows were a poem,” Larissa recalls, reciting from memory: “This lobster loves to pinch, eating his food inch by inch, balancing carefully with his tail, moving forward slow as a snail.” She laughs. “I thought he wrote it for me. It was on his fucking tag.” (story continues below)
Larissa and Pinchers hadn’t been together more than six months before the infidelity rumors began to swirl. While Pinchers was spotted with Lower East Side party fixtures like Cat Marnell and Chunk from the Zhu Zhu pets, Larissa began a dalliance of her own.
“When I met Monchichi, I thought he was so worldly. He was from Japan, he was twenty years older than me. Plus, he encouraged my music career, which Pinchers…” Larissa trails off, shaking her head. “Though looking back, who knows, maybe Pinchers was right.”
Larissa formally filed for divorce from Pinchers while recording her first – and, notably, only – album. Pitchfork gave “Noises to Slurp With Your Ears” a paltry 2.4 rating, and while it’s received a bit of a reappraisal in recent years (its punk-pop revival anthem “Whose Pants (Am I Wearing) (feat. Cee-Lo)” was co-produced by a promising talent named Jack Antonoff), its most lasting legacy is as the final album ever sold at the Times Square Virgin Megastore. “It sucked so bad it killed CDs,” jokes Larissa, taking a long pull from her Geekbar and pointedly spitting it into my face.
By 2013, the tide had begun to turn against Larissa, whose meteoric rise begat an almost Sophoclean fall. Despite Pinchers’ affairs, Larissa alone was villainized in the press for her relationship with Monchichi. The fact that he was twenty years her senior only drew more ire, with Twitter discourse tut-tutting Larissa’s glorification of an “age gap relationship”. “I was crucified. He came out unscathed,” Larissa recalls. It is hard to argue with her, when only yesterday DeuxMoi posted a photo of Monchichi dining at Cento Raw Bar with 26-year-old Madison Beer (Monchichi is 51 years old, and one apple tall).
Before I can ask about the extended rehab stay that followed Larissa and Monchichi’s very messy, and very public, break-up, a security guard enters to inform us that her infamous husband has returned home.
I glimpse Green Grape Labubu only briefly, and even at three inches tall, he cuts an imposing figure. His assistant brings him in, clipped to a backpack, and before I can even wonder if those wide, wild eyes and puckish grimace are the result of his artistic genius or another of his fabled benders, he’s gone.
“Working,” Larissa explains. “Always working.”
In the summer of 2015, it was nigh impossible to open a tabloid without seeing a headline about Larissa, who was still using Pinchers’ last name, “Ty”. Between stints in rehab, Larissa split her time between hosting VH1’s short-lived reality competition “Who Wants to Make A Quiche for Aly & AJ?” and courting scandal. After tweeting “the Hatchimals can [redacted] my [redacted]”, Larissa was dropped by IMG, and VH1 replaced her with a pile of SQand that was looking to make a comeback. After being denied entry to the Hamilton opening night party, Larissa had a meltdown on the streets of Soho, smashing in the windows of Intermix with a pair of Prada Hulk Hands. The resulting video was meme-ified into oblivion, and though it is now remembered primarily for its Songify the News remix, it had a profound impact on the direction of Larissa’s life.
With dwindling finances and nothing left to lose, Larissa moved home to Steamboat Springs, where she and her estranged mother began to mend some old fences. “I deleted social media; I started seeing a therapist, I got a second fully operational butt installed. I got some normalcy,” With this, Larissa grins at me. “I hated it.”
In 2017, Larissa moved to Los Angeles, where she reclaimed her love of music with a residency DJing at Fred Savage’s guest house, and later, Hollywood’s Avalon & Bardot. It was there she met a frequent clubgoer named Mokoko: young, confident, and still completely unknown. “He kept showing off how his eyes were separately articulate. He told me that would make him valuable one day. I should have believed him!” She shakes her head, those signature auburn curtain bangs tossing side to side. “I don’t think he knew who I was. He must have asked me out a dozen times. I told him to keep dreaming. He reminded me too much of a young Monchichi.”
After the pandemic, Larissa was sure Mokoko would forget about her, but as soon as Avalon & Bardot re-opened its doors, he returned to see Larissa’s set. “He’d gotten a little buzz at that point,” Larissa recalls. “2021 or so. So maybe I paid a little more attention.”
One night, Mokoko brought friends along to see Larissa DJ: Crybaby, Dimoo, and, fatefully, Green Grape Labubu. Larissa may have fended off Mokoko’s advances, but she and Labubu ended up talking into the wee hours of the morning. “He told me he was a bag charm,” she remembers. “I didn’t know what he meant. I was like, ‘like a keychain?’ He told me he was an entirely new category. I told him, ‘there’s nothing new under the sun.’ I think I offered to introduce him to Tamogatchi.”
Larissa’s previous relationships had been whirlwind affairs; Green Grape pursued Larissa for a year before she even agreed to a date. With her star long faded and his yet to rise, they got to know each other without the paparazzi’s prying eyes. Larissa admits she didn’t know how relationships worked without constant public commentary. With nothing to his name and no prospects on the horizon, Larissa claims to have told him, “I’ll marry you, but you’d better get bigger than Hello Kitty.”
“That was a joke,” she clarifies. “I never thought it would happen. Besides, Hello Kitty’s wife is miserable.” [editor’s note: Karen Kitty’s team denied our request for a comment] (story continues below)
"Working... always working." The happy (?) couple in 2024
In November of 2023, Larissa and Green Grape were married in Capri in front of their families and a few close friends (Jack Antonoff, Soy Milk Labubu, Cara Delevigne, and a handful of Silly Bandz were among those in attendance). Larissa shows me an album of wedding photos. In them, she’s wearing a simple white shift dress and a classic chignon – a far cry from the ripped jeans and circle scarves that made her famous – and her face is lit up in a genuine smile.
Larissa knows the way people speculate about her online, knows that the widely held belief is that she married the Next Big Thing as a ticket back to the big time. But she maintains her husband’s wild success is as much a surprise to her as it is to anyone else. “I mean, I love him,” she says, wedding album still open on her lap. “But how did he get as big as he did? I mean, he’s kind of ugly, right? I’m not being mean; I’ve said it to his face.”
These sorts of comments will not surprise anyone who’s heard stories from the Gatsby-esque ragers they regularly host at their Hollywood Hills estate. The Labubus are known to retreat to their room in the middle of a party, only for guests to report loud fighting followed shortly by even louder sex. “If we only fought or fucked when no one was around, we’d never fight or fuck,” says Larissa, bluntly. Indeed, the Labubu estate is a notorious crash pad-cum-party palace to the who’s who of who’s next. Even now, just outside the floor-to-ceiling window, Taylor Russell and a the otter Calico Critter family are splashing around in the infinity pool, enjoying the panoramic views of Los Angeles sprawling below.
Far from a fame-hungry Lady Macbeth behind the scenes of the Labubu phenomenon, to hear Larissa tell it, the renewed celebrity that came with her marriage is, if anything, an unfortunate side effect of a marriage for love. By Larissa’s account, what started as hardly more than a hobby appearing on the bags of pop stars like Rihanna and Lalisa Manobal turned Green Grape and his Labubu colleagues into a nearly overnight global sensation.
I can’t help but ask Larissa if she’s jealous, and her answer is an immediate no. “I’m happy for him,” she insists. “But he’s going to need to slow down if he doesn’t want to go the way of Pinchers.”
Now 32 years old and back in the spotlight, Larissa is determined to prove why she was the toast of the 2010s in the first place. Her marriage may not have been one of opportunity, but an opportunity she still has, and she is making the most of it. Her recent Prabal Gurang Met Gala look – a gown constructed from itty bitty micro shrimp wearing even smaller dresses for this year’s theme “Teeny Tiny Stuff” – was an instantly iconic moment. And her recently announced artisan loofah line, Lalabubulufarissa, has already sold out on TikTok shop.
“These are the moments that make it worth it. The rest is just the growing pains of fame,” Larissa insists. I ask if she’s referring to her husband’s DUI, and she demurs. “Everyone has a DUI. It’s how you learn to drive.”
I only see Larissa’s cool-girl demeanor drop once, and it’s when I mention Goose, the up-and-coming bag charm whose vaguely misshapen face and body has been popping up in campaigns from Sketchers backpacks to Mansur Gavriel Jr., to an Oscar-buzzworthy turn in McG's upcoming film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" (pictured below).
When I ask if the nascent fame of the rumored next big bag charm has her at all worried, she drops her voice - perhaps to convey confidence; perhaps not wanting anyone working in the next room to hear. “I’m not worried,” she says. “It’ll take a lot more than a weird little goose to bring down Labubu.”
Whether she’s referring to herself or her husband is anyone’s guess. JJ
