How Your Favorite Brands and It Girls Are Styling the Kitschy Bag Charm Trend
The "Jane Birkinification" is imminent. Discover how funky charms and chic embellishments took over the runways, streets, and closets of your favorite celebrities.
Harking back to ‘70s icon Jane Birkin and her unique take on styling Hermès designs, chunky charms and playful embellishments have taken over runways and TikTok alike. While we first spotted their renaissance in the Spring/Summer 2024 shows, the bag charm trend has continued to evolve and found a comfortable place among the Fall/Winter 2024 collections as well. From Fendi and Balenciaga to Coach and Simone Rocha, brands are not shying away from the cheerful charm stacks.
Associated with the dopamine-dressing trend that replaced the Clean Girl aesthetic and put an end to the quiet luxury craze, this maximalist approach brings back individuality to the forefront. When it comes to accessorizing your accessories, personal style should always be prioritized. Additionally, the charm bag trend taps into nostalgia while bringing it into the adult realm. Colorful plushies and kitsch keychains decorate high-end leather totes that are carried from the office to the bar. Only meant for those who don’t mind a loud entrance, these joyful baubles and quirky embellishments add a whimsical touch to any outfit. "When you just walk around, they jingle and jangle, so it's a happy sound," Birkin commented on the subject.
While there’s no right way of personalizing your bag, it’s always instructional to see how the chicest brands in the market are approaching this playful trend. With endless possibilities, brands like Simone Rocha and Fendi took this personalization trend very seriously and infused their house’s DNA into the charm designs featured in their Spring/Summer 2024 collections.
As for Miu Miu, it was all about the messy girl. With heeled shoes and extra changes of clothes bursting out of the chic leather totes, tangled embellishments clashed as models walked the runway. Featuring colorful ropes, hardware keychains, and leather straps, these unique combinations of baubles felt effortless and intentional at the same time. Paired with greasy hair and unbuckled shoes, models’ sloppy looks represented genuine everyday realness.
Opposite to Miu Miu’s sloppy look, Fendi’s take on the bag charm trend is a much more polished one—yet deeply playful. Crafted in colorful nappa leather, fortune teller charms decorated Fendi’s petite handbags. Evoking nostalgia and cheerfulness, these origami shapes inspired by the famous childhood game added a pop of creativity into their sleek Spring/Summer 2024 looks.
For Balenciaga, it was all about Y2K nostalgia and the effortlessly-cool girl look. With influencer Devon Lee Carlson, model Paloma Elsesser, and actress Nicola Anne Peltz Beckham as some of the faces in their campaign, velvet tracksuits were paired with distressed handbags and explosive charms. Reminiscent of the brand’s legendary Motorcycle Bag adored by the ’00s It girls, Balenciaga’s spring bags are characterized by their distressed-chic energy and countless hanging keychains.
Simone Rocha’s feminine style shone through the pearled and floral charms featured at the brand's Spring/Summer 2024 show, held at the English National Ballet in London. Paired along with whimsical garments featuring long-stemmed roses and cake-like shapes, streams of pearls in different lengths and sizes and flower-shaped charms hang gracefully from Rocha’s compact handbags and added a special touch of delicacy to the playful looks.
As for Coach’s Fall/Winter 2024 collection, spirited references of New York City’s most iconic emblems took over their handbags and totes. Real-sized mugs, apples, pretzels, and postcards hang playfully alongside miniature souvenirs in the shape of yellow taxi cabs and the Statue of Liberty. Celebrating the brand's NYC heritage, these unique details clashed with the simplicity of this season’s leather bags. And if the aforementioned adornments weren’t eye-grabbing enough, Coach hung mini bags from their bigger totes in a meta interpretation of the bag charm trend. This fun approach proves once again that there's no limit when it comes to accesorizing your accessories.
But that’s not all—outside the shows, It girls and attendees were also spotted carrying keychains, charms, ribbons, scarves, locks, and plushies hanging from their designer bags. In the streets of Paris and New York, a whole new meaning was given to Hermès Kelly bags and Miu Miu Arcadie totes, one associated with individuality and uniqueness.
Following the cycle of trends, bag charms became their very own phenomenon on TikTok. With endless tutorials on how to embellish accessories in the most unique—and sometimes most affordable—way, users all over the world were complimented for their creativity and taken as inspiration to later transfer this trend to sneakers and phone cases. And while Prada keychains and Chanel pins are highly desired and add great style to any charm stack, young fashionistas put more symbolic value in those rarest trinkets sourced from flea markets and niche vintage stores. Probably one of the reasons why this trend resonated so much with the younger generations is that the chicest decorations can literally be found anywhere—even in your grandma’s old dresser—and don’t really need to come from high-end stores. It’s more about showing your own personal style than it is about buying designer.
Need more inspiration? Global stars like Dua Lipa and Lily Allen have also been spotted adding an extra layer of charm (pun intended) to their off-duty accessories. Whether strolling with their beau or stylishly lounging in international airports, the singers showcased their colorful stacks, putting a celebrity-approved stamp on the revival of this trend. As the bag charm craze continues to gain momentum, we can’t wait to see how other fashion icons approach this playful comeback.
