Luxury French brand Hermes can charge outrageous prices for its hand-stitched leather goods. Its sturdy Birkin bag, for example, retails for about $10,000.

L.A. accessories maker Olena Sholomytska, born in what was then Soviet Ukraine, thinks that’s extreme. So she and friend Roni Brunn started a business to poke fun at the consumerism that drives demand for expensive designer handbags. Their Miracle Mile company, Thursday Friday Inc., sells cotton canvas tote bags with images of fancier bags screen-printed on the sides.

“We decided to do something that would have an anti-consumerist statement,” Sholomytska said. “The message was: It’s just a bag.”

In May, the two-year-old company will launch a line of screen-printed bags featuring watercolor illustrations of two popular designer handbags: Chanel’s classic quilted purse and Balenciaga’s motorcycle bag.

The bags, manufactured in China, come in four sizes and range in price from $30 to $90. Like the designer handbags they riff on, Thursday Friday bags are produced in limited quantities and change each season.

Sholomytska has settled a suit with Hermes, which sued the bag maker in 2011 for copyright infringement and unfair competition. Since then, she’s introduced new versions of her designer knock-off tote bags. Now, the company, which has four employees, is just more careful to swap out signature logos in its screen-printed images for more generic ones. Besides, commentary and criticism are protected under the First Amendment.

“It’s a little bit scary to be in legal conversations with these multibillion-dollar companies,” she said. “We learned that it’s important for us to be firm about why what we’re doing is legally acceptable. We are not trying to be a fake bag, we’re making a statement.”

– Bethany Firnhaber