DRESSING ON THE SIDE: Garden of Envy

Floral prints are blooming on everything from jeans to clutch bags, and fashion is livelier for it.

By Maureen Mancini Amaturo

Floral prints are blooming on everything from jeans to clutch bags, and fashion is livelier for it. Don’t be jealous of the teens and twenty-somethings reveling in this trend, you can wear it as well as that runway waif. Pick your flower look carefully, and you will create the perfect arrangement.

Avoid the AARP Effect

Wearing a floral dress with a cardigan and sandals is the grandma version. Add a leather jacket and strappy heels or gladiator sandals instead, and you’ve just cut twenty years off the look.

Accessorizing Florals

Florals of the moment are bold and graphic. If you’re wearing a print, pick a solid color from that print for the accessories and it will pop.

Too much jewelry or the wrong piece can give you that Alice-falling-down-the-rabbit-hole dizzy effect. On the other hand, if too dainty, jewelry won’t be worth its weight in chain links against the print you pick. Try wearing one bold, chunky bracelet or statement earrings, or one bold necklace … but not all three simultaneously.

Topping it Off

Wear a floral top with a solid bottom. Not a crop top or a cutout top. The print is the focal point.

Florals Over 40

Choose a deeper, more sophisticated floral palette, not pastels. Try poppy red or black, gray, and white. Pick flowers that are not too colorful because at a certain age, wearing too many bold colors may come off as if you are trying to look younger and may produce the opposite effect.

For the Wallflowers

Try a top or skirt with a floral border, instead of an all-over print, or one big floral on an otherwise solid background. Accent your look with a floral clutch, pump or pin. The trick is planting the right piece in the right place, and not overdoing it.

Being Trendy, While Frugal

Invest in smaller items with a floral print — scarves, pendants, belts. You’ll spend less and still add a trendy touch.