10 designer bag charms to adorn your accessories

The death of Jane Birkin last July prompted a reevaluation not only of her artistic legacy – the actor and singer starred in numerous cult films, from Blow-Up to La Piscine – but also of her impact on fashion, a poster girl for insouciant, thrown-on French style. There was also her namesake handbag, the Hermès Birkin, a fashion canon accessory that began life with a chance encounter between Birkin and Jean-Louis Dumas, the former chairman of Hermès, on a flight. She expounded a desire for a handbag large enough to carry all of her belongings; he, so the mythic story goes, drew the original design on the back of an aeroplane sickness bag.

Her own Birkin, beloved and much-used, would accompany her throughout her life, adorned with strings of colourful beads, silk scarves, keyrings, novelty charms, even watches (‘I don’t like to wear them, but sometimes you need the time,’ she explained). Her argument was that a bag was designed to be worn rather than preserved behind glass, the various trinkets a resolute assertion of individualism and personality in the ensuing era of the glossy it-bag. The ubiquity of the bag charm in recent months – from Balenciaga’s keyring-adorned Rodeo bag to the viral plushie ‘Labubu’ dolls – captures a similar mood, a riposte to minimalism and a statement of personality. When charms appeared on the Miu Miu runway as part of the brand’s S/S 2024 collection, they signalled a new mood of eclecticism: ‘moments of beauty, touches of history, pieces of life’.