The Commodification of Charming Clutter
I promise this is not a Sonny Angel hate piece.
Hi, I’m disorganized.
While some people are unable to create or work in a messy house, I seem to thrive when everything is falling down around me. It’s not that it doesn’t bother me if laundry and mugs pile up. Or that my laptop looks like a folder-screenshot orgy on a good day and a biohazard on a bad one.
I know it’s not ideal, but if I’m on a roll with one thing, I can’t tear myself away. I struggle to multitask or clean as I go while cooking. I have to mow through my to-do list all at once, then when it’s complete, breathe, tidy, and then throw everything into total disarray once more.
I have earned the moniker “Capable Kayla” with my London crew due to several incidents where I proved anything but, spanning from accidentally booking non-changeable flights under the name “Miss Miss Marci” to flooding a penthouse bathroom and adjacent office. I really hope to my friends and loved ones that my disorganization comes across as endearing and scatterbrained and not that I’m a total piece of shit.
The chaos of my daily life has bubbled over into the contents of my handbag. I can certainly relate to this clip of Jane Birkin here tipping out everything but the kitchen sink.
We seem to be more hyper-aware of what we’re packing these days. The allure of “what’s in my handbag” content remains eternal, and the more unhinged stuff celebrities show, the better, as we’re desperate for relatability. See Pamela Anderson carrying a g-banger as a scrunchie and Miriam Margolye’s onions. I know I can’t get enough, and since Vogue won’t return my emails, I’ve mocked up the imagery below.
Inside my work bag, which is a medium black Telfar, it’s likely you’d find the following items:
Wristbands from the local pool.
A Marni cardholder containing various credit cards and a suspiciously rolled up single bill of some foreign currency.
Nail glue.
Multiple packs of soy sauce from sushi lunches.
Fenty Plush Puddin’ Lip Mask.
A Kindle.
A big dumb cup (Frank Green, aka The Melbournian Stanley).
Violette FR Baum Shine highlighter.
Some random receipts that are probably important.
Le Labo Lys 41 perfume.
A protein snack that my therapist makes me keep on me at all times.
Mecca brown lipliner
Goggles for when I do swim at the local pool.
Iron tablets.
An emotional support vape that I will be quitting as my favorite tobacco shop was recently firebombed.
My biohazard laptop
Clinique’s Black Honey Almost Lipstick that I’ll wear when I’m not doing the brown lipliner/lip mask combo.
I enjoyed this piece by Laura Pitcher for Nylon in 2023 - For Gen Z, “What’s In My Bag” Content Has More Existential Meaning. It discusses how the voyeuristic trend has evolved from its sponcon origins, which fueled a parasocial relationship with celebrities, to an exercise in curating and displaying identity.
Several TikToks depict Gen Zers whipping silly little trinkets out of their Baggu’s instead of the predictable phone, wallet, key, and lip balm combo. Rian Phin is interviewed saying the videos “Also serve as a response to misogynistic podcasts and the question of ‘what do women bring to the table?’ It's a way of joking around the idea that you won't ‘bring anything’ to the table.”
What do the contents of my bag tell you about my identity? While I may not carry around a rat or fried chicken (to commit to a bit or otherwise), I’m certainly not bringing anything to the table. I find it interesting that the chaotic handbag has been romanticized, whether via the Jane Birkin effect or Mary-Kate Olsen’s beaten-up Kelly. Perfectly curating an imperfect life seems effortless and cool when the rich and famous do it. After all, they’ve got assistants to organize their lives and clean up after them. It’s a sort of controlled chaos.
But for us average folk? I mean, I don’t overstuff my handbag with random shit to be cool. It’s like that because I don’t have time to empty it, a potential overspill of my garbage mental health, which could inform how I dress, trying to appear polished and like I’ve got my shit together - just don’t look under the hood.
Charming clutter has transcended the insides of our handbags to what we’re dangling off of them, creating the effect of bagmaxxing, a term I stumbled across in a terrific article by Emily Kirkpatrick of I <3 Mess.
The bag charm phenomenon has kept me up at night over the past few months as I’ve intently watched their parasitic-like takeover, looking on adoringly as Miu Miu and Coach handbags are bejeweled with cute trinkets, stuffed animals, and OTT key chains as people explore affordable ways to personalize their stylistic expression.
They’ve infiltrated my IRL job. If you’re interested in reading, I did a deep dive, finding with EDITED data that 52% of new luxury bag charms are now out of stock. The product has become positioned as an entry buy-in to luxury for Gen Z as designers keep hiking their handbag prices out of reach (Fendi’s clip-on nano Baguette is 87% more affordable than the average US price of its Baguette handbag.)
An extension of bag candy, sunglasses and footwear are also being charm-ified. I am actually into these Chloé shoes decorated with shells and sardines (hot girls eat oily fish).
I do love the playfulness of this trend. Fashion is at its best when it’s not taking itself too seriously, and I fully expect to return from my Japan trip with a cute little trinket of some sort (a little black cat perhaps?). However, despite my overflowing handbag, I’m not fully on board with exposing and replicating its chaos on the outside.
I feel this trend works best when there is some meaning behind it, whether it be a souvenir from a trip, a gift from a friend, or a token to match with a loved one - not just buying up a truckload of kitschy keychains to emulate the look. It’s the thoughtful, sentimental purchases with a personal connection that become mainstays in outfit rotations over items bought for the low-cost/high-trend factor purely to be photographed online.
The popularity of bagmaxxing feels like we’ve just succumbed to retailers’ efforts to sell us more shit. Whether Sonny Angels or Stanley Cups, this trend feeds into clutter and hoarding culture. Brands are selling us more plastic and junk than we know what to do with it. Do we really need to accessorize our accessories? How long will it be until landfills are littered with Sonny Angels, Sylvanian Families, and other fashionable little trinkets that are being commodified?
“While the Stanley example might seem a little extreme, it’s really just laying bare the grotesque hyper-consumerism that actually underpins this bagmaxxing trend. And, over and over again this year, we’ve seen the same form of peak capitalism inherent to bagmaxxing manifest in every facet of our lives and decor. Having already sold us more than we can ever possibly use, we are now being trained by corporations to believe that even our objects are in need of more objects to support them.” - Emily Kirkpatrick, A Unified Theory of Bagmaxxing, I <3 Mess.
As trends continue their relentless cycle, enough time will pass before these items will be looked upon with cringe. Ribbons for Gen Z will become what mustaches were to millennials and bag charms akin to those weird-ass owl necklaces. We know that when collectibles age they either grow in value or fall into the obscurity of garage sale garbage (remember Beanie Babies?), which could be very much where these trinkets are headed once the hype dies down.
I actually have an unusual amount of Yowie toys (Kinder Suprise, but for 90s Australian kids) stored in my mum’s garage because I won a contest as a kid. I wonder if I should call her and assemble a little platypus charm for my handbag. Or try and flip it, seeing as a set of two fetched $461 on eBay.
Not to yuck anyone’s yum. It’s great to inject a little whimsy here and there, but the idea of buying up a whole bunch of plastic collectibles because that’s the latest “cool girl accessory” feels like a repackaging of fast fashion to me.
I’ve also never been a girl who played with baby dolls (we were a Barbie, Polly Pocket, and Melanie’s Mall household), so while I can appreciate Sonny Angel is cute, there is no nostalgic attachment for me to want to hang his naked little body off of my belongings.
as one fellow mess to another...hi! I'm never quite comfortable in a place unless I've managed to mess it up a bit (a lot), my bedroom may look like a pigsty but even Sofia Coppola has a messy office, long live the imperfectly organised.
My bags have never had aestheticised contents (way too many receipts, sweet wrappers and tissues in there) but my main bag at the mo is a Sophie Hulme that came with a little brass dinosaur charm, bag charms were a major feature of her handbag line before she closed it in 2018. And in April I added a little panda keychain from a zoo gift shop where I'd gone to see the pandas, I think that's where I'll stop. Sure, influencers trying to replicate the 'contents of a toyshop' iteration from the runways looks ridiculous but broadly this is a trend that I can actually see in the real world, you know? Just not with hanging actual toys off my bag. Also it's been around for years in some form, like every other kid I had pins on my school bag as a teenager and now the kids hang plushies off theirs.
My 7yo has like 25 bag charms on his backpack. Poor thing looks lopsided while he carries it!