What’s in the Bag: Celebrity Edition 2025
|
|
Time to read 6 min
What do celebrities carry when the cameras aren’t rolling? We’re not talking red carpet clutches, but the daily handbags cracked open in Vogue’s In The Bag series. From January 2025 to now, we catalogued 218 items from 10 stars — Ariana Grande, Doechii, Keke Palmer, Hailey Bieber, Lisa from Blackpink, Millie Bobby Brown, Gracie Abrams, Olivia Rodrigo, Jenna Ortega and Mikey Madison.
The findings? A mix of lip glosses and literature, miso soup and noise-cancelling headphones and journals filled with secrets. Together, these bags paint a portrait of modern celebrity culture: carefully curated, deeply personal, and occasionally surprising.
What's In The Bag? Numbers at a Glance
In her Vogue In The Bag video, Gracie Abrams proved that good things come in medium-sized packages, allegedly packing 49 items (we only counted 38) into her Chanel bag — her so-called “Mary Poppins bag” for its seemingly endless capacity. On the other end of the spectrum, Hailey Bieber kept things effortlessly light, carrying our most featherweight celebrity bag, proving that sometimes less truly is more.
Items by Category (out of 218):
- Lifestyle & Personal (22%) — keys, passports, sentimental keepsakes, crafting projects.
- Wellness (17%) — powders, supplements, electrolytes and tinctures. Did we mention electrolytes? (They were a fave among our celebs).
- Beauty (15%)— skin, makeup, SPF.
- Lip Products (6%) — (because they deserved their own category!) glosses and balms still reign.
- Tech (12%) — phones, chargers, headphones.
- Food & Drink (8%) — snacks, protein bars, instant soup.
- Fashion (6%) — hats, clips, spare shoes.
- Bag Accessories (5%) — organisation pouches, passport holders.
- Journals (5%) — writing companions.
- Books (3%) — the literary flex.
- Receipts (0.5%) — In Jenna Ortega’s In The Bag, she pulled out Charlie XCX and theatre tickets, and yes, we’re counting them.
- Menstrual Products (0.5%) — only mentioned once (shoutout Jenna Ortega for being the most relatable celeb).
Item Category by Celebrity (out of 10):
- Universal: Lifestyle/Personal, Wellness, Tech (10/10 celebrities carried items from these categories).
- Near-Universal: Beauty (9/10), Food & Drink (8/10), Journals (8/10).
- Occasional: Books (6/10), Fashion (6/10).
- Rare: Menstrual Products (only 1/10 celebs mentioned this - Jenna Ortega), Crumpled Receipts or Tickets (1/10).
So yes, the data proves it: lip gloss is practically mandatory, books are more common than you’d expect, and every celebrity is just one noise-cancelling headphone away from boarding a plane. Meanwhile, with only a single tampon in sight, it seems celebrities either rarely pack them- or prefer to keep this personal detail private from Vogue.
Image Source: VOGUE/ Youtube
What They’re Reading
Books weren’t just for show- they revealed taste.
- Jenna Ortega tucked away Ottessa Moshfegh’s Death in Her Hands, the kind of brooding, cerebral novel you’d expect from Hollywood’s favorite gothic ingénue.
- Doechii carried Audre Lorde’s Your Silence Will Not Protect You - a sharp, philosophical text.
- Mikey Madison doubled down with Didion and Babitz by Lili Anolik, the ultimate L.A. literati pairing.
Even chart-toppers like Ariana Grande and Olivia Rodrigo carried paperbacks, proof that in 2025, being “a reader” is as much a fashion statement as a Birkin.
What They’re Writing
Turns out the stars are scribblers. 8 out of 10 celebrities carried journals. Not notes apps, not iPads - real notebooks.
Inside: poetry drafts, manifestation lists, unfiltered streams of consciousness. In Mikey Madison’s In The Bag, she proves to be the overachiever, lugging around three journals at once.
The takeaway: even in an era of AI diaries and voice memos, the analogue urge to write (and maybe self-mythologise) hasn’t gone anywhere.
Image Source: VOGUE/ Youtube
Move Over AirPods, the Cords Are Calling
If there’s one thing celebrities won’t risk, it’s being caught without music. 7 out of 10 carried headphones, and many packed multiple pairs.
- The wired comeback was real: Keke Palmer called herself a “classical millennial diva” for refusing to part with hers, Jenna Ortega loved using them when wigs and costumes made over-ear headphones impracticle, while Ariana Grande admitted she’s simply “not an AirPods wireless person.”
- Nearly everyone traveling had noise-cancelling pairs, because when you’re boarding jets and tour buses, silence is luxury.
Headphones aren’t accessories anymore — they’re survival tools.
Incognito Fashion: Hats & Sunglasses
Not everything in the fashion category (6.42%) was about aesthetics. For many celebrities, hats and sunglasses weren’t style statements- they were armor.
Doechii called hers “incognito shades,” while Millie Bobby Brown quipped sunglasses were for “if there’s paparazzi… or it’s sunny.” The double duty is telling: sunglasses protect from UV rays, sure, but more importantly they provide a barrier between celebrities and the rest of the world. Hats function similarly, letting someone slip through an airport or café just a little less noticed.
Lifestyle & Personal: The Quiet Giant
The single largest category wasn’t beauty, tech, or even food- it was personal items. Keys, passports, sentimental charms, and even half-finished crafting projects filled these bags. But it’s the little tokens of connection that stand out most.
Gracie Abrams and Olivia Rodrigo both tuck a deck of cards into their bags- a simple way to stay entertained on the road and make any hotel room feel less lonely. Keke Palmer’s In The Bag features a tiny toy car for her son, Leo — proof that even the busiest stars carry pieces of home with them. Several stars revealed stashes of old photographs, polaroids, and keepsakes, their bags doubling as portable memory boxes.
These aren’t items you can buy at Sephora or borrow from a stylist. They’re personal anchors - mechanisms to stay grounded and connected when fame and busy schedules constantly pull them away. And that, more than anything, is where the glamour slips and the humanity comes through.
Image Source: VOGUE/ Youtube
The Most Unexpected Items in Celebrity Bags
Of course, a celebrity handbag wouldn’t be complete without a few surprises. Some are charming, some are strange, and some make you wonder how heavy these bags really are. Here’s our ranking of the most unexpected items, from quirky to truly unforgettable:
Jenna Ortega’s Harmonica: A harmonica tucked between smelling salts and ticket stubs feels very Jenna- a little retro, a little ironic, and a reminder that she carries a soundtrack wherever she goes.
Doechii’s Prada Heels: Most of us might stash an emergency snack or charger, but Doechii takes it up a notch with a pair of Prada shoes. As Doechii revealed in In The Bag: “You have to have your Prada's, it’s class.”
Keke Palmer’s “Just Keke” Doll: Only Keke could get away with carrying a mini version of herself around. Equal parts hilarious and iconic, it’s the ultimate power move- and a nod to her ability to balance humour with heart.
Millie Bobby Brown’s Dog Microchip Scanner: While most of us carry gum or tissues, Millie’s got a microchip scanner for dogs. Turns out, she’s rescued over 230 pups through her shelter Joey’s Friends. Quirky? Yes. Admirable? Absolutely.
Ariana Grande’s Crystal Ball and Selenite Wand: Fresh off her Glinda era, Ariana isn’t just carrying mascara and headphones In The Bag- she’s got full-on mystical tools. A crystal ball for guidance, and a selenite wand for energy cleansing. If you thought star power was figurative, Ariana’s making it literal.
Mikey Madison’s Crocheted G-String Bookmark: And the winner for “most unexpected” goes to Mikey Madison, who carries a crocheted bookmark in the shape of a thong- a gift from a dancer friend. Equal parts cheeky and eccentric, it’s the kind of detail that makes these bag reveals so addictive.
Why It Matters
When you zoom out, the portrait of celebrity life is strangely relatable (and occasionally, delightfully weird).
Everyone seems to carry wellness boosters, tech, and deeply personal keepsakes. Lip products, snacks, and journals pop up in nearly every bag. Books are scattered here and there, and exactly one star (Jenna Ortega) kept it real with a tampon. The mix paints a culture still balancing self-care (17%), beauty (21%), and personal grounding (22%), but also craving the tactile and analog- books, journals, and even wired headphones.
Then come the surprises you’d only find in celebrity handbags: a harmonica, a Prada heel stashed just in case, or Ariana Grande’s crystal ball. They may raise eyebrows, but they sit right alongside protein bars and lip gloss.
In other words: celebrities may have fame, stylists, and assistants, but their handbags prove they’re not so different from the rest of us — just with a few extra plot twists tucked inside.
