Do you wear jewellery with your printed and patterned garments? You may not need to (check out my tips on knowing whether this applies to you here), but you may still like to add a little something extra, that icing that draws attention up to your face.
It can be a little trickier to decide which accessories to wear with your patterned tops as you have to think about the principles of coordination – related shapes and lines and level of refinement.
I’ve written about this topic before but wanted to show you some real-life examples to inspire you to make the best selections when you’re putting your outfits together.
Related Shapes
This is one of the most important aspects of choosing jewellery to go with patterned garments. The pattern may have a distinct shape and so then finding an accessory (here it’s earrings) that have a similar or related shape provides harmony between the two parts of the outfit.
These Mr Piccolo snowflake earrings are a similar size and shape to the stylised floral motif on my top.
Here I’ve repeated the shape of the leaves with a leaf-shaped earring in a colour that is contained in the pattern with these Meredith Hoult earrings.
This butterfly motif top inspired me to wear this butterfly necklace (which you can see more clearly in the image below where I also paired it with a floral kimono).
It works with the kimono because the shapes of the flowers and the lines within the flowers are related to the shapes and scale of the butterflies.
Related Colour
Not only do I look for related shapes but colours also come into the “which jewellery to choose for this print” equations.
Here the black, grey, white and pink necklace (picked this baby up at the thrift store) has two colours in common with the white and grey top and the black and grey zebra Alfia Galimova kimono and easily ties together these elements of design. You may also note that the size of the beads is quite similar to the size of the stripe in my tee, further relating the two elements of design, yet the beads have a curved end that works well with the curve of the zebra print.
And finally in this example, my peacock handmade silk wrap is complemented by my Betsey Johnson peacock bracelet, again all the colours are repeated in both elements of the pattern. The earrings (again Meredith Hoult) relate in their colours plus they have a feeling of being feathered.
So there you have it, a few examples of choosing jewellery that works with your prints and patterns.
More Tips on Selecting Jewellery
Imogen this is so appealing and not something i had actually stopped to consider ! Thank you always for the enlightment.
You are an absolute genius. No, really – you deliver more really USEFUL content than anyone else I have ever seen on the web in the area of fashion and style (which as we know, are not the same thing…). This article led me to your Jan 2016 post about jewelry selection which was also wonderful. BTW, the photos from 2016 with your chin-length bob were gorgeous – love that haircut on you.
Keep up the great work, from a fan in the USA!
Thanks so much! Not sure about genius but I am interested in providing useful information! Glad that you’ve found some useful jewellery posts – I do try to link in older posts that are relevant! There is so much on here it’s easy to miss it all.