This Playful Runway-Inspired Accessory Amps Up My Minimalist Wardrobe

From the depths of fashion month withdrawal, I’m choosing joy by microdosing maximalism. As a minimalist who lives in neutrals, it was easy to feel enabled this season, but so many collections made a beautiful case for using accessories to break with routine. One accessory in particular cut through the noise and felt like a realistic embrace of playful dressing: cluster and cascading earrings.

Maybe it's just my nostalgic projection, but there was seemingly some shared DNA between the silicone spikey earrings from my childhood and the textured cluster earrings I honed in on at Burberry. At Altuzzara there was no need for extrapolation: utilitarian collars, plaid, and lingerie dressing had an unexpected yet obvious playmate—clustered and cascading earrings that looked like tiny LEGO hydrangea blooms. The latter felt like an exciting challenge to the Row-ification my wardrobe has undoubtedly undergone in the last few years. It also answered the question: what does the girl who loves sleek tailoring but has been in touch with her inner child lately wear?

Seeing the playful fruit earrings from Altuzarra’s look 30 sent me careening to find some vitamin C for my wardrobe, ones felt reminiscent of the cherry earrings I wanted as a teenager, but less literal. I found these vintage carnelian cluster earrings that add color and playfulness to my all-black outfits.

These Oscar De La Renta earrings, paired with a sleek black suit or slinky slip dress and slicked-back hair, would make a formidable totem for warding off seasonal depression and ushering in colder temperatures, longer sleeves and hemlines with playfulness.

There's something magical about a structured silhouette—a high neckline or sharp shoulders—paired with irregular, organic accessories. This juxtaposition of determinate and indeterminate elements has long taken up considerable real estate in my head, moodboard, and wishlist, and it ratcheted up when Phoebe Philo debuted a sculptural resin pair of cluster earrings made to resemble oblong baroque pearls. Tory Burch excitedly entered the chat, and my headspace, with look number 30 this season: a black tailored coat embellished with miniscule, irregularly shaped beads and French cuffs, paired with an earring that can only be described as an assemblage of pearls, gold vermeil, and shark teeth.

A mixed-media, irregularly shaped, cluster earring evokes the same principles as the “wrong shoe theory,” in my opinion. These or these paired with a suit—think Chanel look 35— or a funnel-neck jacket with a lace slip à la Simone Rocha, are my type of whimsical dressing.