Hannah and Rachel Talk: Accessories

Dear friends in fashion, we've gathered you here today to talk about accessories. They're a problem. They're smaller than your clothes, but they're also pretty limited in terms of what they GO with and then there's the whole pressure of keeping up with trends and if you're anything like me you have all this stuff that you feel guilty about since you never wear it and it's not like it's the accessories' fault and geez, just grow a pair and wear the necklace made of walnuts you bought at the flea market that one time. One morning I was getting ready to go to class and I spent probably a whole five minutes debating which earrings to wear, even though I was giving up my opportunity to eat breakfast in the meantime. One of my roommates quietly watched this process for a bit and then rhetorically asked, with something like admiration and amusement and pity and horror, "You do this every day? What is your life?" What indeed. So yeah. Accessories. They can be a pain.

The lovely Rachel, who is all things lovely, is aware of the sort of agonies I suffer over accessorizing, so she asked if I could lend her a hand in that department. Since my summer wardrobe is mostly raggedy jean shorts and a Dartmouth Football t-shirt, I was more than happy to reawaken that part of my brain.

Damn gurl, you lookin' fine. Anyway, the first consideration when it comes to accessories is to ask yourself what you want the focus point of your outfit to be. This is the easy part: what's your favorite thing that you're wearing right now? Exciting: you get to choose. And you can choose your accessories. That is allowed. Now, I don't know how Rachel feels, but my favorite part of this outfit are her shoes. Luuurrrrvvveee the color. Focus point: identified.

I'm a pretty big fan of the whole "less is more" rule, so this outfit really doesn't need that much. I love stripes because as long as there are only two colors and one of them is in the white-brown-black family, they can act as a neutral. Your accessories should either direct the eye toward your focus point or stand out on their own. Rachel's shoes already stand out pretty solidly, so I would recommend a funky belt or bracelet, maybe with a tinge of blue in them. Or a blue-ish pair of earrings maybe. Stay FAR FAR AWAY from the matchy matchy. Trust me. I went down that road in high school and it was NOT PRETTY. Frankly, she's got lots of options here, since basically everything she's wearing can act as a neutral or solid without too much distraction. She could wear a scarf or a righteous hat or a chunky gold necklace. Notice that I said OR. OR, people. Not AND. Pick two max.

Talk about SHOES. I dunno if you can tell from the photo, but those are glittery zebra print heels, dears. They should DEFINITELY be the focus of the outfit, even though the color and the neckline of the dress are pretty and eye-catching. It's all about the sparkle here. The dress is colorful enough without needing any assistance from the accessories to give it a bolster. If Rachel put her hair up, either in a ponytail or a top knot, and then wore some dangly sparkly earrings, she'd be ready to rock and frickin' roll. Maybe a bracelet too, as long as both the bracelet and the earrings are only sparkly (no colors or heavily-colored metals, like gold) and sort of go together. Matchy matchy in that instance is okay. They just can't be zebra print too, basically.

Rachel, godspeed on your journey of accessorizing.