Beauty brands are convinced the answer is yes. A growing number of them are going beyond the flimsy makeup cases that populate holiday gift sets to introduce functional everyday handbags that level up their merch, expand their assortment and offer shoppers a stylish entry point. YSE Beauty, Sofie Pavitt Face, Nocturnal Skin, Merit and Dr. Barbara Sturm are among the names betting that a thoughtfully made purse can boost customer acquisition and build brand loyalty as much as a serum.

In October, Molly Sims’ YSE Beauty caught the bag bug and released a limited-edition holiday gift set in collaboration with handbag designer Clare V. featuring a Chou Chou Clutch, two lip tints and a gold lips bag charm, hitting on the trend of piling up accessories with even more accessories. The set retails for $325. Clare V.’s clutches typically range from $75 for a coin clutch to $575 for the structured Claude Clutch. Clare V. describes the Chou Chou Clutch as a “clutch reimagined as a velvet round bag.”

Sims calls Chou Chou a natural extension of her philosophy that beauty isn’t just about skincare routines, but about how people live, what they wear and the moments that make them feel confident. She says, “I wanted to create something that felt like the finishing touch, a piece that ties your look together the same way a great lip does.”

Brand marketing and communications consultant Stacey Levine believes handbags are a logical extension for beauty brands. She explains that beauty consumers care about more than just beauty products, and that accessory collaborations can resonate if they exist within beauty brands’ broader aesthetic universe and are done through a lifestyle lens.

Levine says, “Accessories give brands a way to show up in the parts of a consumer’s day that exist beyond the bathroom mirror, while also tapping into new audiences and borrowing equity from a fashion partner who already has permission to play in that space.”

If beauty brands’ bags aren’t treated as afterthoughts, Naomi Emiko, co-founder of marketing agency TNGE Global, thinks they have the potential to elevate their business. “They’re worth it when they genuinely extend the brand world and create new cultural entry points, and they fall flat when they’re treated as merch,” she says. “The brands that succeed see the bag as a statement, not just as an add-on: a way to deepen emotional connection, signal identity and claim a bit more space in the consumer’s everyday environment.”

Gen Z’s holiday gift wishlists are demonstrating an appetite for beauty accessories that act as fashion pieces. Saie’s structured The Vanity Case, priced at $48, has emerged as one of younger consumers’ most talked-about holiday gifts this season, according to youth culture analyst Casey Lewis, founder of the Substack “After School.” Originally released in 2022, the case’s top-handle silhouette and clean, subtle logo bridge makeup storage and fashion statement, welcoming consumers into Saie’s assortment.

Beauty’s foray into handbags mirrors the longstanding ties between fashion and beauty. Fashion companies have depended on fragrance as an accessible entry point and a powerful marketing tool to pull consumers into their brand ecosystems. The strategy arrives as many luxury fashion brands look to reduce their reliance on handbags, which have historically contributed a disproportionate share of their sales. Beauty brands, in turn, see bags as a chance to borrow fashion’s cultural cachet and amplify their lifestyle storytelling.

Before Sofie Pavitt became an aesthetician and launched her namesake skincare brand, she worked in fashion as an accessories designer for brands like Michael Kors. Her cross-category experience made Sofie Pavitt Face’s Centre Bag a natural move linking her former and current professional endeavors. Priced at $125 and coupled with the brand’s Nice Ice Toner Trio, the silver Centre Bag has a center top zip closure, a shoulder strap and an interior pocket.

Pavitt’s goal in developing it was to steer away from the obvious types of makeup bags that are easy product complements for beauty brands and to make it practical outside of shoppers’ beauty routines. She says, “It felt fun to produce a going-out bag instead.”

Beauty brands hope consumers will wear their bags in public proudly, giving them a marketing vehicle familiar to fashion brands, but largely unavailable to beauty brands selling products normally hidden in bathroom drawers, purses and makeup cases. Sofie Pavitt Face’s Centre Bag and a velvet green bag from Dr. Barbara Sturm, which comes with its $447 Winter Kit, are embossed with their brand names. The branded handbags are a fashionable step up from T-shirts, sweatshirts, stickers and hats that have been staples of the beauty merch era and could portend an escalation of beauty brands’ merch reach as they attempt to stand out from competition and try new avenues of customer recruitment.

Emiko says, “There’s something powerful about carrying your favorite beauty brand on your body instead of tucked away in a makeup pouch.”

Pavitt and Sims anticipate their brands’ bags selling out by the end of the year. Skincare brand Nocturnal Skin’s Japandi Knot Bag has sold out three times since its launch last year in part due to a video on the bag’s history going viral. Priced at $54, the Japandi Knot Bag is inspired by similarly designed bags used in ancient Japan to carry items such as money, sewing materials and beauty products. Nocturnal Skin co-founder Daniel Kiyoi’s family has been making knot bags for generations in the centuries-old Japanese furoshiki and azuma bukuro wrapping traditions.

Nocturnal Skin’s Japandi Knot Bag combines a minimalist Japanese aesthetic with velvet, a common fabric for Scandinavian interior design. The velvet is a nod to Kiyoi’s co-founder at the brand, Katey Hassan, whose family hails from Scandinavia. Originally in a rich green shade, Nocturnal has widened the Japandi Knot Bag selection to include a striped linen version and an upcycled black denim version, which is currently sold out.

The Japandi Knot Bag is a gateway into Nocturnal Skin. On a dollar basis, the bag propels less volume than the brand’s sole skincare product, Polar Night Renewal Serum, priced at $92 and $178. In 2025, among repeat customers who purchased the Knot Bag as their first product, roughly 45% went on to purchase skincare.

“If you are just entering the universe of a Chanel or a Dior, maybe you can’t purchase the bag or the dress yet, but you can start by buying the lipstick and, for us, we really start to bring people into the world of the brand through the bag,” says Hassan. “It’s interesting the way that, once someone is in the world, they really want to invest in other things within that world.”

Levine notes that beauty bags are intended to be brand builders rather than margin drivers. Emiko adds that, although they can ratchet up complexity as beauty brands venture into new materials, manufacturers and minimum order quantities, they’re relatively simple lifts compared to a full beauty product development cycle and provide faster creative payoff.

Kiyoi and Hassan are doubling down on showcasing the functionality and cultural elements of Nocturnal Skin’s Knot Bag on social media. They’ve poured a five-figure sum into advertising over the past year, and Nocturnal Skin’s videos spotlighting the bag have drawn over 6 million views to date. The story behind it resonates with consumers even as imitation knot bags pop up.

“People are looking for this heritage and this depth, and it’s a way of connecting that’s a little bit more difficult to do with a brand that’s a little bit more oriented towards laboratories,” says Hassan. Kiyoi says, “There is this real history behind it, and I think that, when it’s getting tossed into a winter kit or somebody’s holiday set, it is losing that context that makes it so beautiful and unique.”