MODETRENDS 2021

what’s up with all these teeny-tiny micro bags?

Fashion is a industry where things are often taken to their logical extremes. While some women are likely still paying off their orthopedic bills from the enormous bag trend of the late 2000s, things have now swung back firmly in the other direction; brands of all types are now making bags that are small enough to be considered decorative accessories for other bags.

For brands, the upside to these tiny bags are twofold. First, they provide entry-level customers a way to buy one of the brand's bags without quite hitting the price tag of a normal-sized designer purse, but they don't do the kind of damage to a brand's air of exclusivity that monogram canvas bags at lower price points tend to. It's a "special little piece," not a less-expensive, logo-covered canvas bag.

Second, these bags provide a new product tier for the highest-end customers. If you're already a devoted buyer of Fendi bags, for example, then why wouldn't you buy an adorable little miniature to hang from the new spring bag you're already buying? At a certain consumer level, adding another $1,500 to a purchase price doesn't make people blink, especially if it makes a customer feel like she's getting something extra and ultra-fashionable.

For the consumers who fall in between those two groups, though, these bags are just bags, and that means they're all intended to carry stuff in some way, shape or form. At this size, they do that with varying levels of success. Because my ultimate arbiter of whether or not I can carry a bag is if my enormous iPhone 6 Plus can fit inside, that's the rule I used to measure all of the ultra-tiny bags below. It's 6.22 inches tall, so that's where I drew the line.