Handbag Therapy The Trend That's Hanging On

Labubu Love

Once upon a time, keychains were tchotchkes you picked up at the airport gift shop. Then came the plush Labubu charms, which tapped into Gen Z’s insatiable need to accessorize the accessory and suddenly the humble dangler was reborn as a fashion statement. Now they’re swinging from A-list handbags, strutting down luxury runways and hanging by their necks on high school backpacks, as if the future of style hinged on a bejeweled lobster clip. And maybe it does. Designer handbag makers, staring at sliding sales, have latched onto charms like a lifeline. Can’t convince shoppers to drop $5,000 on another monogrammed tote? No problem, tempt them with a $350 trinket to hang on the tote they already own. It’s retail triage disguised as whimsy.

The shift is no accident. Luxury sales are in freefall. LVMH’s fashion and leather goods unit slipped 9% last quarter, Prada fell 3.6%, Gucci sales crashed 25%, (read all about that here> https://www.vabenestyle.com/post/gucci-s-identity-crisis-when-maximalism-fizzles-and-no-one-s-buying) Shares across the industry have shed double digits. Economists predict the personal luxury market could shrink up to 5% this year, the worst since 2009 if you ignore that whole pandemic thing that was going on in ‘20-‘21.

Enter charms: cheap(ish), viral, and crucially Instagrammable. They are everywhere. Tapestry, parent of Coach and Kate Spade, is running with it. Already outperforming rivals, it plans to flood stores with charms for the holidays, selling them as “an accessible way in.” Translation: if you can’t buy the bag, at least you can buy the brag. The ultra-luxury set, once too haughty to care, has pivoted. Prada now pairs an $825 robot charm with a $2,300 backpack. Gucci hawks dragonflies and dogs, all north of $450, displayed like precious gems in stores. These brands used to tuck charms away online like guilty secrets. Now they’re parading them on runways, front and center. Most interesting are the bag charms of the actual bag you are carrying? Carrying the Dior 30 Montaigne bag? Why not hang a $400 charm of the same bag on the handle… just because.

Of course, no one expects charms to save the industry slide. Speaking to Fashion Network, Deborah Aitken of Bloomberg Intelligence said, “They’ll be a tiny sliver of sales,”. But they’ll keep shoppers engaged long enough to avoid a total breakup. As Saunders put it: “The worst thing for a brand is to lose a consumer completely.” Consumers, meanwhile, are happily collecting. Consumers want to be in touch and always on top of the latest trends. In other words: the luxury purse may be out of reach for now but for the price of dinner and drinks, you can still buy the illusion of belonging by dangling one charm at a time.