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At Australian Fashion Week in mid-May, attendees went hard on embellishments. The trend that emerged on recent runways and red carpets has made its way to the fashion set, and to the streets: outside the Carriageworks art centre, fashion week-goers adorned their bags with vibrant charms and pinned playful brooches atop jumpers and blazers.
Earlier this year, embellishments appeared on the SS24 and AW24 runways. Both Tory Burch and Erdem showed an array of brooches, while Coach and Balenciaga offered up charm-heavy bags. Miu Miu, a brand on a roll, delivered both.
Momentum built with the red carpet treatment. At the Met Gala, designer Willy Chavarria and Saks CEO Marc Metrick wore blazers complete with giant rosettes; Mike Faist donned a Loewe turnip; and Jeff Goldblum’s lapel featured a wonderful assortment of trinkets. Last week at Cannes Film Festival, Sienna Miller wore a Schiaparelli double-anatomy brooch (part of a full look), while Margaret Qualley jazzed up an oversized hat with a Chanel pin sculpted into a sprig of lavender. Some pin-on adornments adopted political meaning, as actors from Leïla Bekhti to Jasmine Trinca showed support for Palestine with flag and watermelon brooches.
Oftentimes, embellishment is fun and light-hearted — a light-lift way of personalising an otherwise generic look. Other times, it’s a means of communicating a stance: at New York Fashion Week, attendees pinned flag brooches to handbags. Embellishments are a simple way of communicating identity through fashion.
As ever, social media has a hand in all this. Besides the influence of runway collections, the trend is additionally fuelled by TikTokers using “Jane Birkinfy” handbags to express and develop personal aesthetics, says Kayla Marci, senior analyst at EDITED. “Jane Birkin bag” currently sits at 122.3 million posts. On Pinterest, searches for bag charms are up 274 per cent year-on-year; antique brooches are up 27 per cent.
For Lori Hirshleifer, buyer and owner of New York retailer Hirshleifers (with an Instagram profile photo that features a charm-adorned Birkin), it’s a medium for displaying her collection of trinkets. “I’ve always been a collector of things — pins, charms, jewellery — I think the bag charms are just an extension of that,” she says. Hirshleifer puts the current moment down to a mix of nostalgia and runway newness. “I think Miu Miu is to thank for that at this point in time, but people like Jane Birkin have always mixed high and low with accessorising.”
A new luxury starting point
Embellishments offer a way into luxury brands. A newcomer to luxury with a limited budget might wear a Loewe brooch on a The Frankie Shop blazer, or pop a Chloé charm on a bag that cost under $1,000. It’s a way of buying into luxury when prices are pushing even small accessory categories out of reach: a wallet that might once have cost $300-odd is now pushing between $500 and $1,000.
Brands have recognised an opportunity. EDITED recorded a 47 per cent year-on-year increase in the number of new handbag charms arriving online at US and UK luxury brands. It reported that 32 per cent of styles are now out of stock — consumer demand is going strong, says Marci.
For retailers, there’s a toss-up between reach and margins. Though Mytheresa has noticed an uptick in bag charm availability across showrooms, it hasn’t placed many orders due to low pricing. “We do own pieces from brands like Alaïa, Loewe and Gucci, and while we’ve seen a recent uptick in interest, it’s not a significant priority for us,” says Richard Johnson, chief commercial and sustainability officer of Mytheresa.
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Brooches are higher priority, given their more elevated price point. “Our anagram brooches, particularly those from YSL and Loewe, are performing exceptionally well, surpassing last year’s sales,” Johnson says. “They serve as an entry-level purchase, providing customers with an accessible way to buy into the brand without committing to a larger investment.”
Content creator and writer Heather Hurst, known online for her charmed-up handbags, agrees. Charms and brooches offer a lower-priced, more versatile purchase with more styling opportunities, she says: “It’s becoming the accessory version of ‘one dress, 10 ways’ energy.”
Fashion assistant and writer Jalil Johnson wrote of Miu Miu’s SS24 pieces in his Consider Yourself Cultured Substack: “If neither of those options tickle your fancy, there are the adorable little lanyards that can double as anklets or bag charms.” Said options were $1,690 Bermuda shorts or $925 satin Bermuda sandals, while the lanyards cost $320. Styled as bag charms on the runway, the lanyards are sold out on retailer Fwrd.
A personal touch
Embellishments offer an accessible way to cultivate a sense of individuality — or, at least, appearing to do so. Consumers are looking for ways to hone their personal style at a time when it is increasingly difficult to do so. “There are a lot of ‘core’ aesthetics emerging,” Hurst says. “It’s nice to have a personal touch.”
However, luxury brands need to be wary of hopping on the trend so eagerly. For Hurst, the companies pumping out charms, devoid of care and personality, aren’t hitting the mark. “When it becomes something that can be mass acquired, when everyone is acquiring the exact same one, that’s when it gets into a place of being antithetical to the original purpose of the trend,” she says.
But consumers can steer the way they buy into embellishments. “It’s a way to interact with fashion in a personal way,” says Hurst. Shoppers can look to thrift or shop smaller, independent labels to find embellishments that have a story to tell and connect with them on a more authentic level.
Hirshleifer echoes this sentiment. “Start with a charm that’s somewhat sentimental to you — for me, I have two corgis so I love putting a corgi charm on my bags. It’s good to start with your personal story then build off that,” she says. “There’s no wrong way to start and I think the unseriousness of bag charms means you can really have fun with it and switch in and out based on your mood.”
Hurst references a fish brooch a friend gave her as a birthday gift. “She saw that I loved [artist] Jean Cocteau pins that are [worth] thousands of dollars from the ’70s. She found one very similar and we learnt about Jean Cocteau together. It’s a way for people to have an education into references, artists and designers that’s very accessible and fun and not so serious.”
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