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It was nearly 10 years ago, in 2017, that Glossier first released a sweatshirt. It was simple, with the name of the brand emblazoned across the front — like band merch, but for a beauty brand.
And then, in 2024, Hailey Bieber singlehandedly reinvented the merch wheel with the invention of the Rhode Lip Case.
Simultaneously, in fashion, bag charms began to trend, with consumers piling them on — accessorizing their accessories to further signal something about themselves to the world. According to The New York Times, Anthropologie started to sell bag charms in August 2024, selling more than 10,000 between August and October.
Eventually, beauty brands caught on, finding ways to wrap lip balms in silicone encasements or simply piercing the tops of packaging to make them wearable. In some cases, they added charms — a simple activity that has become popular at brand-hosted influencer, press and consumer events.
Charms are now a booming beauty trend.
When Claudia Sulewski’s body-care brand, Cyklar, launched perfume oils, it marked the first time the brand had a product that didn’t simply live in bathrooms or vanities, Sulewski told Glossy. Suddenly, “I was having people come up to me in person and fish around in their bag to show me which fragrance they were wearing. They were [saying], ‘Oh my gosh, I have Cyklar with me.’ I had the thought [that] if this perfume oil bottle is small enough to lose in your purse, maybe it’s also small enough to hang off of your purse.”
Initially, the brand created a silicone cover that slips over the cap of the rollerball Perfume Oil, which now comes in 12 scents, each $24, launched in Sephora in late February. It was first offered as a gift with purchase, which, Sulewski said, drove sales of the scents.
“People are now buying the Perfume Oils as first-timers, because they want the bag charm and they want [the set],” she said. The silicone cap cover allows users to easily swap scents, too, if they like to wear more than one of Cyklar’s Perfume Oils.
In tandem with the brand’s Sephora launch, Cyklar introduced a new scent, Rose Bud, and its first for-sale bag charm: the same silicone cap cover, adorned with a rose charm. It was included in the brand’s influencer mailers for the scent and is now available on the brand’s e-commerce site for $20. Sulewski said she was conscious to not put anything out into the world that felt like clutter, acknowledging the abundance of fairly useless brand merch. “It’s exciting that people have embraced it in a way that it feels like an extension of the product, versus, ‘Here’s some merch we’re throwing at you.'”
Hair-care brand Odele does not currently offer a bag charm, but it collaborated with Susan Alexandra on a holder for its dry shampoo last August. “We were seeing a lot of other brands have some fun [using bag charms to make] their products more portable, and we wanted to do the same with our most portable option, our dry shampoo, which is a perennial favorite and a top-selling SKU,” said Lindsay Holden, Odele’s co-founder. Partnering with Alexandra was like, “creating bag jewelry, and gave us the opportunity to link up with a designer with a like-minded audience,” Holden said.
Touchland’s entry into wearable beauty also came through collaborations, specifically its Hello Kitty collaboration in 2024. Last May, the brand followed that with a Mickey Mouse collaboration: another carrying case with character ears. And then, in July, it debuted a case collaboration with Crocs. The Crocs cases for the brand’s now iconic hand sanitizer, inclusive of the shoe brand’s signature Jibbitz charms, sold out in less than 24 hours.
“Hello Kitty was the first signal to us that people wanted to accessorize. And then the Labubu [trend] hit, and now everyone is, like, hanging [stuff off] a million different chains,” said Tatiana Bravo, Touchland’s marketing director. Now, Touchland also offers plain keychain sanitizer holders while continuing to sell the collabs. “Historically, hand sanitizer was this thing that you kept away and hid, and now people are proudly wearing it,” she said.
Such accessories are the result of what Allison Collins, co-founder and managing director of the advisory firm The Consumer Collective, has dubbed the “adornment effect.” But they also speak to our current moment, she said.
“There’s a movement toward decoration and maximalism and fun and expression. And some people think it’s a pushback to quiet luxury. Maybe to some extent, but I actually think it’s more rooted in consumer psyche. People are just feeling an existential dread with everything going on in the world — the geopolitical landscape is really scary, the economic landscape can be really scary — and something like a lip gloss bag charm is just silly and fun.”
While cases like Cyklar’s and Touchland’s are not going anywhere, wearable beauty has now entered a 2.0 of sorts.
Take the launch of Cocokind’s Ceramide Lip Blur Balm in March 2025. The packaging was engineered with a built-in ring so that the lip balm can hook onto a key chain or bag charm, no casing needed.
“We’re always thinking about how products actually fit into real life,” said Priscilla Tsai, Cocokind founder and CEO. “We know that lip balm is one of those things everyone buys, but you also immediately lose it. I always joke that I can keep a lip balm for maybe three days before I can’t find it because I put it in this coat pocket, or I put it in this purse,” Tsai said.
Based on the crowdedness of the current lip product market, she said she wanted to bring something innovative to the space. “If we [were] going to create a lip balm in a really crowded market, let’s please add some functionality to the packaging,” she said.
Cocokind also sells a variety of charms that can be hooked onto its lip balms to truly make them an accessory.
“It becomes something you can actually customize and wear — a vehicle for self-expression as part of your everyday style,” Tsai said. The brand has seen people clip the lip balms onto belts, bags and keys, and the wearability has served as a free billboard, Tsai said. Simply having the product visible is a conversation starter, Tsai said, and has spurred a kind of word-of-mouth marketing that is incomparably authentic.
In January, Laneige launched its JuicePop Box Hydrating & Lightweight Oil Lip Tint, which also has a built-in ring. Prior to the launch of JuicePop, the brand had experimented with key chains, as well as cap topper-holders (like Cyklar’s) for some of its other popular lip SKUs.
“With Juicepop Box, adding a wearable into the product was part of the product development and the creative process from day one,” said Allison Pollack, Laneige’s vp of marketing. In February, the brand introduced an additional shade and a limited-edition Lip Tint Wristlet & Keychain ($20), which is also available at Sephora. It was created “in the kitchen” with the retailer, which suggests that the retailer, too, wants to offer ways to buy into the trend.
Every person interviewed for this story said this trend, though it will continue to evolve, is here to stay. As Tsai put it, “I could never not hook a lip balm to my purse, because it’s just a staple now. I expect my lip balm to be there.”
The smartest brands, however, will find ways to iterate, that to Sulewski’s point, go beyond feeling like junky merch.
Brands, Collins said, “need to think about a way to participate that feels wholly aligned with their brand identity and doesn’t feel like a cash grab.”
“You should [ensure] that whatever you put out there has functionality, where, if this trend does fall off in 18 months, every [iteration] doesn’t necessarily end up in a landfill,” she said.
Week in review
You probably already know that Alix Earle (5.5 million Instagram followers, 8.3 million TikTok followers) introduced her skin-care brand, Reale Actives, on Wednesday. The brand is backed by Imaginary Ventures, which also invested in Mikayla Nogueira’s POV Beauty. It is geared at acne and launched with two cleansers, a serum and a moisturizer, ranging in price from $28-$39. The brand is betting that sex sells — Earle is naked on its billboard in NYC.
Kiehl’s introduced a two-piece kit tied to “Love Story,” inclusive of two products reportedly used by Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr. The limited-edition “Iconic Power Duo” includes the brand’s Crème Silk Groom and Original Musk Oil. Since “Love Story” premiered in mid-February, the brand has seen 159% boost in visits to the Creme with Silk Groom product page and a 86% increase to the Original Musk Eau de Toilette page.
Boy Smells is introducing its existing Vanilla Era scent in new, limited-edition packaging with Twitch streamer Vanilla Mace (1.3 million Instagram followers) as its new face. In a press release, the brand stated, “Her humor, authenticity, and unfiltered presence have made her a standout voice among Gen-Z creators, representing a new wave of internet talent shaping culture in real time.”
Speaking of wearables, Stanley introduced its new Clutch Bottle, making it easy to take your hydration on the go. Expect to see this on the grounds during festival season.
Eberjey and Ilia teamed up on a capsule collection of four pairs of the former’s silk pajamas in two new and exclusive prints.
Also in collab news, Dôen partnered with Garrett Leight on a capsule collection of four pairs of sunglasses inspired by “French songbirds and silver-screen starlets of the sixties and seventies,” according to the apparel brand’s founders in a press release.
YSL Beauty and Charlotte Tilbury have joined Merit and Westman Atelier in the lip department’s hottest new trend: sheer lipsticks. YSL Beauty introduced its Lovenude Lip Blusher Soft Blurring Lip Color and Charlotte Tilbury launched the Pillow Talk Long Lasting Blush Balm Sheer Lip Tint.
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