Slayyyter, Zara Larsson Are Taking the Bag Charm Trend to the Hips

If you thought the bag charm trend was going anywhere, you were right: it’s dropping to the hips, at least if some of the performers at Lollapalooza in Chicago have anything to say about it.

Slayyyter made the case with fishing gear. The singer clipped brightly colored lures around a pair of olive micro shorts, arranging them across her hips like a utility belt. She made the shorts herself and removed the hooks from the lures with pliers before taking the stage. The “Daddy AF” singer’s stylist, Hunter Clem, said the look was “definitely inspired by the outdoors,” with “some camp” worked into the idea.

“We always love to kind of find young designers, work with designers, and kind of always mix pieces that she’s collected or that she’s handmade,” Clem said in a video shared by M·A·C Cosmetics, which provided Slayyyter’s festival glam. In this case, the mix apparently included a tackle box’s worth of waist accessories.

Zara Larsson offered a more literal bridge from the bag charm craze. A blue-and-yellow beaded flower hung from the right hip of her cutoff denim shorts, with long green strands trailing against her leg as she performed. No designer credit has surfaced, though the piece resembled the beaded floral work independent knitwear designer Paul Aaron created for Larsson’s “Midnight Sun” Tour.

Larsson’s flower also made the larger bag-charm connection hard to miss. After several seasons of handbags loaded with plush characters, miniature beauty products, leather letters and personal messages, the same appetite for dangling extras was bound to spill over.

Jennie, meanwhile, had no interest in choosing just one waist accessory. Wearing Ann Demeulemeester, the Blackpink star wore a mustard-toned belt low over black leather trousers, with a tightly laced black cummerbund above it and a white scarf knotted at one hip. The scarf trailed beside her leg as she performed, bringing the same movement as Larsson’s beaded strands on a much larger scale.

The members of K-pop group i-dle also made the waistline part of their group styling. All five wore denim shorts, but their belts moved between black leather covered in silver studs and larger, Western-inspired buckles. The studded versions recalled the mall-emo belts of the early aughts, especially worn low across distressed denim. One member, Minnie, even opted a silver chain body harness, while Jeon Soyeon had several chains that cascaded from her second grommeted belt.

Not every Lollapalooza belt came loaded with trinkets, though. Suki Waterhouse wore a wide blue-and-beige patterned style over floral leather briefs, complete with rectangular hardware and a long loose end hanging from the waist. With pink fishnets, ruffles, feathers and a floor-length sequined train already in play, the belt was hardly the loudest part of the look, but It still added to the overall decorative waist effect.

Wolf Alice lead singer Ellie Rowsell paired a fitted black leather jacket with low-slung leather trousers and a wide belt covered in round and pyramid-shaped silver studs. The hardware was fixed rather than dangling, but it gave the waist the same decorated feel, breaking up the classic rock uniform of all-black leather.

The move from bag handle to belt loop has already been happening offstage. Halsey tied a red paisley bandana from the belt loop of baggy jeans at Guizio’s Los Angeles opening last weekend, wearing another printed scarf over her hair. Dua Lipa has spent the summer moving scarves between her head and her Hermès bags. During the World Cup, she also tucked a Madonna “Confessions II” jersey into a back belt loop and let it hang from her jeans.

Labubus may have made the bag charm fashion’s favorite dangling extra last summer, but the decorative, sometimes utilitarian impulse that has taken over the larger charm trend was never truly limited to handbags. Lip balm, water, scarves, fishing lures: the objects change, but there is always somewhere to put them.