CHARMED Life

This season, 'It' bags are not it. Rather the personality-adjacent trinkets that go on them determine their ultimate status.

- By Ashwini Arun Kumar

Vivienne Fashionista Bag Charm. LOUIS VUITTON, price on request

In one of the most universally-circulated pictures of the late French-British actor Jane Birkin, she's scooped up her namesake bag - made specially for her by the French leather goods house Hermès - filled beyond its max capacity, under her right arm while perfectly balancing its contents. That's not even the interesting part.

Jane had decorated the top handle of this ultra expensive bag with inexpensive bohemian-looking beads. On occasion, she was even known to have tied a miniature harmonica and a wristwatch on her Hermès. She can be credited with jumpstarting a trend of adorning bags with trinkets and key rings as a symbol of self-expression - a trend that seems to have made a timely comeback.