A 50-Yuan Canvas Bag Paired with a 3,000-Yuan Charm: Young Trendsetters Are Carrying Half Their Net Worth on Their Shoulders

Choose Your Bag-Charm Faction

By 2025, bag charms have become a nationwide fashion phenomenon — everywhere you go, you’ll see them dangling proudly.
Young people, eager to express “we are not the same,” have all come to the same method of self-expression:
bag charms as portable emotional containers, broadcasting their attitude anytime, anywhere.

Out in the world, young people use bag charms to announce who they are.
For the sake of the charms, let’s give a round of applause.

Here’s a fun fact: you might know Labubu is getting its own movie,
but what you may not know is that the hottest toy in the designer-toy world right now… is Stargirl / Starman (星星人).

Blind-box hidden editions have surged to 12× their retail price, new collections sell out instantly, and offline pop-up stores clear inventory on opening day.
A familiar path — the same rise-to-fame story Labubu once had, is now being replayed by the “Starman” series.

Both these top-tier IPs share another common boost: bag charms.
Labubu became famous after celebrities used it as a bag charm,
and the most popular Starman products today are also the plush keychain versions.
Everyone knows: whichever POPMART character you love, the bag-charm variant is always the most desired — and the hardest to get.

Fashion legend Jane Birkin, the muse behind the Hermès Birkin bag, once said:
“I hang things on my bags because I don’t want my bag to look like anyone else’s.”

By 2025, her philosophy has gone mainstream.
Bag charms have become everyday fashion symbols,
and young people use them to highlight identity, emotion, and uniqueness.

Once again —
Young people walk through life, and their bag charm speaks for them.

Choose Your Bag-Charm Camp

The bag may be basic — the charm is not.
And once the charm becomes basic, the thought you put into it becomes not basic.

Just as even the most indifferent person will secretly test their MBTI,
bag charms — infinite in style and personality — can also be categorized into different factions.
After all, MBTI only has 16 types, yet people analyze it endlessly.

Faction 1: The IP Fan Base
Whether you’re into POPMART, Disney, Universal Studios, Jellycat, Sanrio, anime, gaming characters,
or even the mysterious orange carrot from “wmls,”
these charms all say one thing:
“Hi, this is my taste.”
A quick way for strangers to identify your fandom.

Faction 2: Cultural & Museum Charms
Museum, art exhibit, zoo, tourist city —
in the past you’d buy a fridge magnet;
now you buy a charm to hang on your bag,
letting the world know where you’ve been.

Faction 3: “I Hang, Therefore I Am”
These people hang whatever they want, whenever they want.
Their choice of charm reflects their mood of the day.
Maybe they can’t afford luxury bags,
but affordable charms?
They might have 5, 6, 7… or 90.
If they don’t rotate them frequently — how can every charm get love?

Fashion scholar Wen Daomi told Fast Company China:
“Mainstream accessories today are minimalistic and low on creativity.
This creates room for smaller, more expressive objects.”
The rise of bag charms proves scholar Azuma Hiroki’s view:
modern consumers no longer seek “universal goods,”
but products that feel made specifically for them.

According to Yangcheng Evening News:

• In early 2025, the “bag-charm economy” skyrocketed.
• JD Supermarket reported a 164% increase in plush charm sales.
• POPMART’s plush charm revenue surged 1276.2%,
  accounting for 44.2% of its total revenue — surpassing figurines for the first time.

Bag charms, once an accessory of accessories,
have become market mainstream products with their own brands and supply chains.

Experts point out:
Bag charms meet a cross-level need — appealing to all ages and budgets.
What unites users is the desire for personality and emotional expression.

Bag charms have evolved into symbolic identity markers.
They help people find community and belonging in a fast-moving digital world.

Accessories that are easily replaced and upgraded avoid aesthetic fatigue
and keep consumers engaged longer.
The charm is replaceable —
the person seeking self-expression is not.

So, what’s your charm today?
Share it — we want to copy your homework.

Every Generation Has Its Own Bag Charm

Young people’s trends often confuse parents.
But bag charms are different — they bridge generations.
After all, our parents were once fashion pioneers too:
BP pagers clipped to belts,
keychains heavier than the keys.

Older folks say:
their version of bag charms was the enamel mug
hung on a messenger bag in the 1950–60s —
beautiful and practical.

Fast Company notes that the “quiet luxury” trend pushed minimalism to the forefront.
But too much sameness eventually becomes dull,
and people start craving the expressive diversity of earlier eras.

Meanwhile, accessories are becoming increasingly humanized —
not just functional add-ons,
but emotional extensions of the self.

Just like how a single emoji conveys a mood,
a charm can turn a plain bag into a 3D mood board.

Fashion is a cycle.
Bag charms today echo the early 2000s,
when everyone hung trinkets on their phones and schoolbags.

We crossed into the millennium with excitement —
and now look back on that era with warm nostalgia.

From “Chinese dreamcore” to retro trends,
every generation has its own longing for the past.

The movie Midnight in Paris revealed a truth:
each era envies an era before it.

This summer, the meme “It’s 2008, a normal day” went viral.
For 24–30-year-olds,
the 2000s were their awakening into the adult world.

Nostalgia is not about the past —
it’s about missing the version of ourselves who had endless curiosity.

Bag charms, too, are a way young people rebuild emotional closeness
in a world that often feels uniform and rushed.

They whisper to themselves:
“You finally woke up.
It’s 2025.
Have an ordinary but delightful day.”