The Charm Trend Is Turning Everyone's Designer Bags Into Middle School Backpacks

No, you don’t have tinnitus. There really is a jangling noise taking over city streets. It’s the sound of charms and tchotchkes dangling off bags, from luxury leather top handles to canvas carryalls. The trend, recently dubbed “Birkin-ifying,” is inspired by the eccentric way Jane Birkin accessorized her namesake Hermès bag. While some Birkin owners have turned their luxury purses into oversized, leather charm bracelets, it’s hardly the only design getting loaded up with accouterments. Partly thanks to TikTok, the trend has broken into the mainstream, with people of all ages—and spending levels—Birkin-ifying their bags. And so a project of individualism turns into another example of the fashion mob mentality.

Birkin-ifying isn’t anything new. Let’s take a quick trip back to the early 1980s when Hermès’s Birkin bag was born on an airplane. Birkin was, at the time, known for toting her belongings around in wicker baskets, but when her things tumbled out of her purse upon boarding a plane, her seatmate suggested she use something with more pockets. “What can you do, Hermès doesn’t make it with pockets,” the French actress and singer recalled saying in a 2018 interview with CBS This Morning. Little did Birkin know, she was speaking to Hermès’s then-executive chairman, Jean-Louis Dumas. “I am Hermès,” Dumas replied. Thus, the two started brainstorming, dreaming up the now-classic design that would bear Birkin’s name.

For many people, a Birkin is an investment piece, placed on the shelf of a well-lit closet to be admired and taken out on special occasions. But the late style icon didn’t treat her own with such delicacy. Birkin was known for overstuffing her bag with papers, taping flags and symbols on the leather, and layering charms, beads, and miscellaneous items off the handles. “I just thought it was more fun to hang things off it,” Birkin said in another CBS interview. “So, I hang my watch off it and all my boobles and bangles and beads because when you walk around they jingle and jangle.”

For years, it’s been trendy to carry lived-in Birkins à la Jane. In the mid-aughts, women like Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen and Lindsay Lohan were known to tote around beat-up Birkins. Those women refrained from adorning their bags with baubles, but a new generation has embraced the full Jane Birkin look. Celebrities from Dua Lipa and Gigi Hadid to Kaia Gerber are personalizing their own designer pieces with silk scarves, “I <3 NY” keychains, and clusters of pearls. Here are luxury items worth thousands of dollars—if not tens of thousands—coveted by many, but enjoyed by few, looking like a middle schooler’s JanSport backpack.

The current resurgence of the Birkin look can be traced back to the Miu Miu fall/winter 2023 show from last March when Miuccia Prada took keys, which usually rest within bags, and placed them on the outside of purses. She upped the ante in subsequent seasons, adding paracords and overstuffing purses with clothes and shoes. By fall/winter 2024, other brands were catching on, including Coach, which attached New York City-themed keychains to its designs. Fendi also hopped on the trend, with the brand’s designer, Kim Jones, tying leather Chupa Chups lollipop cases to models’ accessories. It invoked the look of a colorful Bath & Body Works mini hand sanitizer hanging off a backpack, although Fendi’s version is a bit pricier at $620 (actual lollipop not included).

This past season, the momentum continued as brands like Chloé and Balenciaga also showed charms on the runway in ways that fit in with the houses’ respective ethos. Chloé’s Chemena Kamali opted for a bohemian take—metal, fabric, and leather pieces hanging off slouchy purses—while Demna weighed down his Rodeo bags with padlocks, chains, and carabiners.

Now, average bag owners are taking to TikTok, offering “Birkin-ify” how-tos by tying scarves around handles and hanging necklaces, beads, and keychains off zippers and loops. Many cite Jane as the inspiration for their work, but others don’t even mention the namesake, and seem unaware of her influence on their purses. They’re simply looking to zhuzh up an old, plain purse.

The trend is slipping further and further away from its original inspiration of Birkin placing an Aung San Suu Kyi sticker on her bag in support of the Burmese pro-democracy movement. Scrolling through those TikTok videos, one feels less like they’re watching acts of expression, and more so a competition for who can find the kookiest, coolest charms in an attempt to one-up others. Not-so-mini stuffed animals, faux flowers, and even smaller bags are just some of the adornments TikTokers have embraced.

Go ahead, throw one of those Kipling monkeys on there while you’re at it. But in a few months, when the trend passes, just remember: the real Jane Birkin never removed her “boobles.”