For the past two years, it has been difficult to find a handbag trend that spread as quickly, or as democratically, as the bag charm. A Birkin could have a plush rabbit hanging from its handle, a Coach bag could be covered in keyrings and miniature fruit, and a perfectly ordinary canvas tote could acquire the same general treatment with whatever happened to be sitting in the bottom of a drawer. The point was supposedly that no two bags needed to look alike.
By the middle of 2025, that idea had become slightly harder to believe.
Once Labubus were hanging from handbags everywhere, luxury houses were selling their own carefully designed charms and retailers were dedicating entire categories to things intended to make a bag look spontaneous, the contradiction became difficult to ignore. What had started as a reaction against polished, anonymous luxury had developed a fairly recognisable uniform of its own. The bag was meant to look as though its owner had accumulated a strange assortment of objects over time, except increasingly those objects could all be bought in one shopping session.
That does not mean bag charms are suddenly finished. In fact, fashion brands are still selling plenty of them in 2026. ELLE devoted a feature this spring to beauty products designed specifically to double as charms, while Harper’s Bazaar was still recommending them as one of the easiest ways to update a handbag in July. Chloé has sent furry tails down the runway, Coach has produced miniature leather books, and people are still tying scarves, beads and small objects to their bags.
What has changed is the appetite for charm clutter. The look in which every free centimetre of a handle becomes an opportunity for another plush toy, chain or keyring is beginning to feel less fresh, partly because it has become so easy to recognise as a trend rather than an expression of somebody’s personal taste.
The question, then, is not really whether bag charms are over. It is whether we have reached the point where adding more things to a handbag no longer automatically makes it look more individual.
I think we have.
The Bag Charm Trend Was Always About More Than Charms
The revival made sense because it arrived at exactly the right moment.
By 2024, luxury fashion had spent several years talking about understatement. Logos were becoming smaller, colours more restrained and silhouettes more deliberately anonymous. The Row became shorthand for a whole philosophy of dressing, while “quiet luxury” turned beige cashmere and inconspicuous leather bags into something close to a cultural argument.
Bag charms offered a release from all of that seriousness.
Suddenly, the expensive leather bag did not have to be treated like a sacred object. You could tie something ridiculous to it, add an old keychain, clip on a toy or cover the handle in beads. The references often returned to Jane Birkin, whose famously overstuffed and decorated Hermès bags looked very different from the pristine Birkins displayed behind glass today.
Vogue Business identified “chaotic customisation” as a significant Gen Z trend heading into 2025, describing the broader desire to alter bags, shoes and clothing as a response to increasingly homogenised fashion. Fashionphile subsequently reported an 85% year-on-year increase in bag-charm searches in its 2025 resale report.
That context matters because the charm itself was never really the interesting part.
The appeal was the idea that an expensive object could look lived-in.
A beaten-up Balenciaga City with several keychains attached felt more personal than an immaculate bag carried straight from the boutique. An old scarf tied around a handle could suggest years of accumulated possessions rather than a carefully assembled look. Even the more childish charms softened the seriousness of spending thousands of dollars on a handbag.
For a while, the messiness felt refreshing.
Then Everyone Started Buying the Same Personality
This is where the trend began to undermine itself.
The whole point of handbag customisation was supposedly that it made a mass-produced object more individual. Yet once the same charms began appearing on thousands of bags, the visual language became remarkably consistent.
There were plush animals, cherries, bows, colourful cords, miniature pouches and eventually Labubus. The bags underneath might have been completely different, but the styling increasingly looked as though it had been assembled from the same Pinterest board.
Who What Wear described 2025 as the point when the trend reached saturation, noting that the accumulation of fluffy keychains had become so widespread that it no longer conveyed the nonchalance it once had. Instead of looking as though the owner did not care too much about an expensive handbag, a heavily charmed bag could begin to look like evidence that the owner was keeping very close track of what everyone else was doing.
That is probably the central weakness of any trend built around individuality. Once enough people copy the method of being individual, the method becomes a uniform.
The same thing happened with the Birkin-ification idea. Jane Birkin’s bags looked compelling because the decoration appeared incidental to her life. There were stickers, scarves, charms and objects that accumulated because she used the bag rather than because she was trying to reproduce a specific styling formula.
Buying six accessories to make a brand-new bag look accidentally personal is a very different proposition.
Labubu Was Probably the Peak
If one object came to represent the high-water mark of the trend, it was the Labubu.
The character had everything the bag-charm cycle needed: recognisable design, collectability, scarcity, social-media visibility and the slightly absurd contrast of an inexpensive-looking toy attached to a very expensive handbag. By 2025, Labubus could be seen hanging from Birkins, Chanel bags and just about everything else.
That ubiquity was also the problem.
Once the same creature appeared everywhere, the supposed customisation became another form of branding. Instead of the handbag carrying a strange object specific to its owner, it carried something instantly identifiable as a fashionable purchase.
By early 2026, even publications still enthusiastic about bag charms were acknowledging that the Labubu phase had peaked. Who What Wear described shoppers as increasingly tired of the heavily decorated, childlike version of the trend, while its broader 2026 bag forecast suggested that charms were beginning to slow even as the desire for bags with personality remained intact.
People have not suddenly decided they want handbags to become anonymous again. They appear to be losing interest in one particular method of making them distinctive.
The New Bag Charm Is Less Likely to Look Like a Toy
The clearest sign that the trend is evolving rather than disappearing is what designers are producing now.
Chloé’s Spring/Summer 2026 bags were accessorised with furry tails that feel more tactile than cartoonish. Coach has made miniature leather books that function as charms without looking like plush collectibles. ELLE has documented the rise of beauty charms, where lip products, perfume and mirrors are designed to hang from a bag rather than disappear inside it. Harper’s Bazaar, meanwhile, has identified a move towards artisanal materials, leather accessories, crystals and sentimental pieces rather than purely novelty objects.
There is a noticeable change in tone here. The first wave often relied on abundance, while the newer version is more likely to rely on one object with an interesting material, shape or personal meaning.
That may be a leather tassel, a metal pendant, a miniature pouch, a stone or something that can move between a bag and a necklace. The decoration remains, but it does not necessarily need to turn the handbag into a noticeboard.
This feels less like the death of the charm and more like fashion correcting for overuse.
Once a trend reaches the point where more is always more, the natural next move is usually to take something away.
Decoration Is Moving Off the Bag
There is another clue in current street style: the charms themselves are starting to migrate.
Vogue reported during the Spring 2027 menswear shows that the decorative keychains, mini pouches and trinkets previously concentrated on handbags were increasingly being attached to belt loops and waistlines instead. The objects were familiar; the placement was new.
That shift makes sense because the underlying desire has never been specifically about handbags. It has been about taking a finished outfit and adding something slightly unnecessary and personal to it.
Once every bag handle became crowded, the waist offered a new surface.
There is a similar movement towards charms worn as necklaces, something Coach explored on its Spring/Summer 2026 runway with miniature bags and objects suspended from long chains.
Vogue has also argued that accessories are moving back onto the body more generally, pointing towards brooches, hair ornaments and other forms of embellishment after two years in which so much decorative attention was concentrated on handbags.
The charm has not disappeared so much as escaped from the handbag.
Built-In Decoration Is Replacing Some of the Clutter
Handbag design itself is also becoming more decorative again. That is significant because part of the reason charms became so useful was that the bags beneath them were often relatively plain. If you owned a minimalist leather shoulder bag, adding a keyring immediately gave it another layer of personality.
As handbags become more embellished, the need to decorate them afterwards becomes less obvious.
Bracelet handles, sculptural hardware, embroidery, woven surfaces, unusual textures and jewellery-like closures are becoming more prominent. Who What Wear has framed this directly as a shift from charm overload towards bags where embellishment is designed into the object itself.
That does not necessarily make the result more restrained. A bag covered in embroidery can be much louder than one carrying a single plush keychain.
What changes is where the personality comes from.
The design no longer needs the customer to finish it.
That may prove particularly appealing after several years in which shoppers were effectively encouraged to buy an expensive bag and then immediately buy several more things to make it look complete.
The Commercialisation of “Personalisation” Was Always Going to Cause Fatigue
This is where I think the bag-charm trend became most interesting, because its commercial success was also what weakened its original appeal.
The idea began with customisation as a form of resistance to sameness. Instead of accepting a luxury bag exactly as the brand presented it, the owner altered it.
Luxury brands then discovered that they could sell the alterations too.
Suddenly, personalisation was not an old keyring, a friendship bracelet or something picked up while travelling. It was another branded product category, often priced with the same logic as the handbag itself.
This was commercially sensible. As luxury bag prices climbed, charms offered customers a cheaper point of entry into the brand. Vogue Business noted as early as 2024 that searches for bag charms were reaching new highs at the same time that consumers were looking for smaller luxury purchases, while retail intelligence showed a sharp rise in new handbag charms arriving online from luxury labels.
From a business perspective, the appeal is obvious. A customer who cannot justify a new handbag may still buy something to attach to the one she already owns.
From a fashion perspective, however, the logic becomes slightly circular. The accessory intended to make a bag less corporate becomes another corporate accessory.
Once every luxury house is selling its own version of individuality, individuality becomes another product line.
That Does Not Mean the Original Idea Was Bad
There is still something genuinely appealing about a handbag that looks used and personal.
I would rather see a bag acquire a scarf, old keychain or strange little object over several years than remain untouched in its dust bag because its owner is afraid of damaging the resale value. One of the pleasures of leather goods is that they can become records of ownership rather than objects preserved permanently in boutique condition.
The problem was never really the charms.
It was the pressure to make every bag look charmed.
Fashion trends have a habit of turning optional gestures into requirements. Once the bare handle of a handbag begins to look unfinished simply because everybody else has attached something to theirs, the gesture has lost much of its original spontaneity.
That is probably where we are now.
A bag with no decoration at all is beginning to look interesting again precisely because the alternative became so familiar.
Are Bag Charms Over in 2026?
No, and the evidence does not support saying that they are.
Brands are still producing them, fashion publications are still covering them, and new versions continue to appear. The difference is that the strongest current examples look less like attempts to recreate the maximal charm stacks of 2024 and 2025.
The trend is becoming more specific.
One good charm may replace five. Leather, metal, fur, beads and sentimental objects are replacing some of the obvious cartoon collectibles. Some of the decoration is moving onto belts, necklaces and clothing, while bags themselves are becoming more embellished through their construction.
This is why I would hesitate to call the decline of charm overload the end of bag personalisation.
If anything, the broader idea has proved remarkably durable.
People still want bags that feel like their own.
They may simply be tiring of buying the same objects as everyone else in order to prove it.
What I Think Comes Next
The next phase will probably be much less easy to package as a single trend.
If personalisation continues to matter, the strongest version will be the one brands have the least control over: objects that have some relationship to the person carrying them.
An old hotel keyring, a charm bought on holiday, a child’s toy, a vintage pendant or a scarf that has been worn for years will always look more convincing than a bundle of items purchased because a styling guide suggested them.
This does not mean expensive designer charms are somehow illegitimate. Hermès has been making its Rodéo charms for years, and Fendi’s fuzzy Bag Bugs were already turning handbag decoration into a luxury product long before Labubu arrived.
But there is a difference between adding an object because you enjoy it and constructing a bag to demonstrate that you understand the charm trend.
Fashion can usually tell, and so can everyone else.
The Big Bag Blog Verdict
Bag charms are slowing down, but I do not think we are heading back to the period when an immaculate handbag was expected to remain exactly as the designer intended.
The more important legacy of the trend is that it made expensive bags feel less precious. It encouraged people to knot scarves around handles, attach toys to luxury leather and treat handbags as possessions rather than exhibits. That part of the shift is worth keeping.
What feels increasingly tired is the idea that personalisation needs to be maximal or instantly legible as personalisation.
The moment everybody started hanging the same Labubu from a different designer bag was probably the moment the trend reached its logical conclusion. A styling device invented to make mass-produced handbags look individual had itself become mass-produced.
The 2026 version is already more restrained and, in some ways, more interesting. A single strange pendant, leather tassel or miniature object can do the work that half a dozen charms were doing a year ago, while jewellery-like hardware and built-in embellishment are giving bags personality before anything is attached to them.
Perhaps the best outcome is that we stop thinking of bag charms as a category that needs to be either “in” or “out”.
Jane Birkin did not decorate her bag because a trend forecast told her handbag personalisation was having a moment. The objects accumulated because the bag was part of her life. That is still the version worth copying.
Not the charms themselves, but the indifference to whether they were fashionable.
PIN THIS!
