On a Friday night in Soho, artist, educator, and creative director Luna Monay was offering a workshop in the same style as their middle school art classes. Anyone was welcome to join in a hands-on, assembly-style bag charm lesson by a real-life trend pioneer. Monay had been making charms for just over a few months but is a lifelong DIY creative known on and offline for their work across mediums. By day, they teach sixth graders in their hometown of Washington D.C., but frequently travel to New York, specifically to the M Jewelers’ Mulberry St. location, to do tooth gem activations. It’s become something of their calling card, but Monay has never been relegated to one craft. Their love of art-making is bolstered by their commitment to accessible instruction. So, when they started sharing more of their custom bag charms to their large social following across Instagram and TikTok, it was merely an extension of the work they already get to do with their students.
“No matter how good the people might look up here with their tooth gems and bag charms,” Monay tells GU, leaning over the resin trays of silver and gold key links. They naturally evoke the stylings of the quintessential art teacher, commanding a room of older girls and men despite their petite stature and chipper voice. Everyone in the room recognizes that this person holds years’ worth of depth beyond their age, and by the fact that they are even present, conducting this class to this intimate audience, that there’s something in them that compels them to share when they could easily be somewhere else. It is a Friday night, after all.
Luna greets everyone who enters the popular SoHo retailer — a zoomer landmark that opened at the height of Instagram’s before-times; when King Kylie could launch a thousand businesses at the drop of a post and anyone having a good-enough outfit day would go downtown in the hopes that a street photographer would propel them to fifteen minutes of digital fame. Luna evokes that nostalgia as well, but their relationship to online visibility comes more from a sense of practical intention mixed with luck. They don’t associate these things with capital; they’re just used to people following them because they’re fly.
At one point, Luna helps a student hold her pliers properly, quickly prying the tiny curve of brass into a straight wire malleable enough to bend but strong enough to hold as many beads, gems, or pendants as the heart desires. This, they explain, is how keychains and bag charms are made. As students become more comfortable, Luna walks around the room demonstrating styling tips as well, clipping jangling charms onto a waist belt and hobo bag as examples. There’s a sensory harmoniousness to the trinket-clinking sounds against the brightness of the showroom. Sure, there’s an awkwardness to a room of strangers making their little crafts, but everyone knows this scene, everyone’s done this before.
“I promise you there is a group of eleven-year-olds right now doing it better than anyone. They’re all walking around with their bags turnt up, and they made them themselves.”
At the start of the year, microtrend forecasters predicted that the post-pandemic “core” cycle would settle into a slower stream of fashion influence, more rooted in rotations of personified nostalgia. There was a move towards a sense of curated individuality, a display of legacy but for people still building one. Think “old money aesthetic” but performed with a more eccentric bend. There was talk of an eclectic grandpa concept, a resurgence of early 2000s Mary Kate & Ashley paparazzi photos on moodboards, and the gradual reappearance of Jane Birkin’s signature bag styling. The idea: of longevity can be channeled with the help of styling. Bag charms and brooches are a carefree way to custom-signal personality whilst encouraging fashion enthusiasts to lean towards maximalist mix-and-matching. It’s too much, but not too much.
In some retail spheres, the bag accessories concept has been utilized as a luxury consumer entry point, but embellishment is also being democratized. Anyone can “Jane Birkinify” their handbag, or their entire wardrobe for that matter—no Birkin required.
There is a DIY element to sourcing trinkets for keychains or ornaments, scaling the size and weight based on the materials used. Monay themself sources indiscriminately, mixing textures in a more self-reflexive take on the exercise. One of the most prominent charms in their workshop is an original — a pink fuzzy monster character with porcelain teeth fitted with gems. It’s the size of a baseball but squishy enough to double as an accessory and stress relief tool.
Luna credits dollar stores and mixed metals for their particular take on the art form. The materials, no matter what they are, need to be convenient to find to focus on the bigger picture. The convening element of the trend, Monay says, is potentially the most important part. Though charms can be made in isolation, they need not be. The slower practice may not be compatible with the trend’s rapidly increasing popularity, but the commodification of arts & crafts robs younger people in particular of the fellowship aspect of creative processing. “It’s all a knitting circle,” Luna says. “We’re here, we’re creating, we’re gossipping. People need that.”
As a 20-something impacted by the COVID pandemic and its lingering haunts, they leaned deeper into creative projects to retain a sense of peace and identity amidst loss. Though many of their works are highly individualized—sketching, sourcing, etc.—they have an appreciation for collaboration and want more young people to feel the positive impacts of sharing hobbies with other people. It teaches resourcefulness and understanding, which Monay sees in spades in their role as an educator.
Another master craftsman recognizes this immateriality. During the pandemic, Tyler Mada, known professionally by Mada, had a lot of downtime to reconsider her navigation of the arts industry so far. The Savannah College of Art and Design alumna, who studied animation and fashion design in Hong Kong, honed her talents across traditional and digital mediums before cutting her teeth in the midtown Vivienne Westwood flagship store. Understanding the styling and merchandising of the punk fashion architect deepened Mada’s conceptual navigation of the avant-garde, and she knew she wanted to combine the more referential elements of her craft with the playfulness of character design.
During the pandemic, Mada deleted all her prior social media accounts and relaunched with a new Instagram page wholly dedicated to her design work. Her follower account soon rose to the tens of thousands and today, the page stations the world she is building for her animations.
The Mada signature characters are big-eyed, circle and ellipsoid-headed drawings that harcon a more mischievous version of the Sonny Angel or the Powerpuff Girls—both of which she cites as inspiration. She has been expanding on this particular animation design since middle school but knew that eventually, she would want the drawings to take a physical form.
Keychains just made sense and became the most sustainable option under circumstance. Then, she designed the perfect landing item—a simple patent leather purse. The Trinket Bag was born.
“The idea of keychains feels nostalgic but also needed right now for the comfort they provide,” she says. “It’s nice to bring a little bit of the familiarity of home wherever you go.”
Designed specifically with the functionality of charms and keychains in mind, the Trinket Bag comes with keychains and ribbons attached. Since every accessory combination is randomly selected by Mada herself, none are exactly alike.
The final campaign was born of the same friendships she formed with fellow Westwood alumni, such as stylist Purp Eberhardt, who modeled charm bag in the official release campaign. This closing phase of the activity was achieved collaboratively between a group of young people joint in a commitment to artful camaraderie and conceptualism.
Back at Monay’s Bag Charm Workshop, the novice accessories assemblers progressively get comfortable without threat of evaluation. What you make, you take and there is no failing in a Luna art class. Many spaces market themselves as safe but this genuinely was. The objective of the evening was owned by the instructor, not the students whose only job was accomplished by showing up and participating.