Jan. 28, 2015

By Jordan Gittens

Feathers, furs and transparency. All trends that are going to make a giant splash in 2015.

This year’s Spring/Summer runway looks featured designers such as Michael Kors, Balmain, Miu Miu and a plethora of legends. While these looks may be for the S/S fashion season, if you want to stay ahead of the curve, it is extremely easy to bring these items into your winter closet.

While you may not be able to afford items such as Balmain or Neiman Marcus, fur can be easy to find as long as you are willing to put in the work. The perfect places to find furs are thrift stores. These places are often thought of as being tacky, but are a figurative treasure trove. You can find the perfect classic pieces, that if worn properly, can revive your wardrobe in a whole new way. You also can see if your grandparents or parents have any furs or feathers packed away somewhere – most of the time they will. It may not be in the best condition, but you can make it work if you try. For example, if you found a fur vest it would pair perfectly with boots, depending on the color, and a one tone outfit. One of the more difficult things about fur is that you cannot pair it with a lot of color. If you do so, the entire outfit becomes tacky and that is one less thing we need in the world tackiness.

Feathers are difficult to work with, especially when it comes to cleaning. They can’t simply be thrown into the washer and dryer. If you do so, you will ruin the way it lays on fabric and the shine that the feather can have; you should treat feathers like silk.

You also don’t want feathers to overpower your outfit. If you’re going to wear a feathered vest, it has to be worn in the same way as you do with fur; one piece that can be extravagant and keep the rest of it simple. Don’t pair a feather vest with feather necklace; it’s far too much going on to keep yourself looking classy and fashion forward.

Transparency has been slowly making its comeback in retail, but a lot of the time we do it wrong. The transparent peach and blue shirts that tie at the front that you wear with a cami when you go out on the weekend are so passé. Now, transparent dresses with panels have made comebacks. Imagine this: a completely transparent dress, with black panels covering the chest and thighs. This outfit is far more daring than a shirt that the average person wears. Like I’ve said before, you want to remain at the forefront of fashion and not be one of the laggards who picks up on the trend a few months before it’s about to wear out. Fashion is much like history, it repeats itself. Much like we don’t want history to repeat itself, we don’t want certain aspects of fashion coming back to the forefront. Therefore, it is our duty to make sure that we are making sure that it is constantly advancing.

Trends go in and out, but they will always come back in the end. So when your furs and feathers eventually die out, don’t throw them out. Keep them in storage and remember to store them well, as we don’t want moths eating through our pieces. You don’t want to hoard, but you do want to keep the things that will remain classic and always come back into style.