At First Blush, shortened to ‘afib’ (a fib, playing on the idea of it being a joke), is a brand that humorously asserts love as a purchasable commodity through its products. Serving as a satirical commentary on Pop culture and its influential portrayals, it questions their impact on our perceptions and expectations of love and relationships, aiming to expose how these representations contribute to reinforcing the idealized notion of romantic love. The Meet-Cute Bag is the brand's star product.
The bag, being an object laden with feminine connotations, symbolizes a gendered trap, eliciting specific reactions from the male gender and thus critiquing gendered mental associations. Simultaneously, the product serves as a critique of capitalism by conveying the notion that ‘you can buy love,’ reducing the profound concept of love to a commodity.
The mechanism at the base is manufactured from acrylic and abs plastic. The spring loaded pulley system which is operated by a pull chord transfers the force along the base of the bag. The 3D printed mechanism is spring loaded to release the objects from the chassis using gravity and then return the hatch back to its original position.