Beat-Up Bags Are In

On one particularly frantic day during fashion week, I had to forgo all my chic clutches and mini bags in favour of a rather unsexy, beat-up tote. I’m a working woman, after all, and a day spent running around means I need a vessel that will carry my computer, chargers, notebook and snacks. (The only thing scarier than a person who works in fashion is a hungry person who works in fashion.)

Before heading out the door to my first show, I slung a colossal bag over my shoulder. Already out of breath and somewhat horrified at my reflection, I sent a selfie to my friend. “This is Olsen twin energy,” she assured me. And you know what? She was onto something.

I may have been schlepping out of necessity, but these days, fashion takes most kindly to accessories in a sorry state. Case in point: In its end-of-year report, luxury resale platform The RealReal reported a rise in searches for “bags showing visible wear.”

One of the most buzzy It bags du jour is the 2000s-era Balenciaga City Bag, which is beloved because of its inherent beat-up beauty. Even when presented as new at the store, City Bags are slouchy and deflated—never in mint condition. They come looking somewhat weathered, welcoming you to wear them in.

Perhaps the strongest style icons of our time are the aforementioned Olsen twins, who are, as my friend so astutely pointed out, renowned for their battered bags. Stained with wine splotches, pen marks and even chewed-up gum, the Olsens’ designer carriers are the perfect extension of their particular brand of sunglass-wearing mystique.

Then there’s Jane Birkin, who popularized the stuffed-to-the-brim aesthetic with her trusty, beat-up Birkin. The bags these tastemakers clutch—which always look as though they’ve seen better days—are an extension of their complexities, and their stylishness. Where fashion is always idealizing newness, there’s something subversive in wearing the same accessory until it breaks.

Prev

Next

Photography via Launchmetrics/Spotlight

1/3

Throughout fashion month, this perspective has been peppering the runways. Take Coach’s Spring 2026 show. The heritage house introduced a series of intentionally folded-up bags with the brand’s decades-old Kisslock closure detail reimagined on the side. Models carried the bags not through the arm loops, but by scrunching together the straps for an on-the-go oeuvre.

Prev

Next

Burberry, Photography via Launchmetrics/Spotlight

1/3

Bags were unclasped at Tory Burch, unzipped at Burberry and crafted to look like one strap was hanging off at Monse. The idea, ultimately, communicates a sense of imperfection. For Tory Burch’s part, creative director Honor Brodie said she wanted it to feel like the models had just stumbled out of bed. She paired her undone accessories with wrinkled separates and skirts slung low with a laissez-faire effect.

These designs speak to a growing sentiment in pop-culture: that an interesting life is actually more alluring than a perfectly put-together curation. Take the viral response to brand Paloma Wool’s Fall 2025 collection, unveiled just before Fashion Month kicked off. The campaign was, to put things plainly, predicated entirely on mess. Instead of curating a glossy campaign with a crisp, minimal set and symmetrical product positioning, designer Paloma Lanna wrote that she wanted the images to “mirror my daily life” with a newborn.

In the widely-circulated images, models pose next to a kitchen counter full of food, a living room scattered with toys and a mother breastfeeding her baby. The bag in the campaign is similarly unpolished: it’s off-white and folded under the arm with one rogue strap hanging down. Above all it feels real, and in an age where fakeness is taking over fashion, that makes it incomparably cool.

This is what I’ll take with me next time I reach for a lived-in satchel. I may never be a clean-girl carrier of an Hermès Kelly, but the more weathered my bag gets, the more it reflects me. As Mary-Kate Olsen once said about her dinged-up Balenciaga: “It explains my life.”