If you’re simultaneously obsessed with the latest micro-trends and too intimidated to test them out, you’ve come to the right place. This is Ways to Wear, a monthly series where editor Eliza Huber offers a dose of outfit inspiration focused on current trends that feel intriguing yet overwhelming at the same time. Consider it your guide to actually wearing the coolest items of the moment, no matter how puzzling they might appear at first.
In fashion, a few years never pass by without at least one person trying to make leopard print a thing again. The kitschy print will show up in a runway collection or outside of one of L.A.’s many celebrity hot spots (yes, I’m looking at you, Sushi Park and Giorgio Baldi) in the form of a velvet coat or pair of loafers, leading to a bevy of content surrounding its return to fashion’s good graces. It rarely sticks, though, and I think I know why.
Whenever leopard print has become a “trend,” it’s always done so in a way that feels excessive or over-the-top, but the times when it’s felt the most covetable are when it’s worn in a casual, laissez-faire manner that allows whatever item it’s printed on to become a timeless staple. There’s a reason why my leopard-print mood board doesn’t include very many images from the handful of times that leopard print has made waves in the last two decades. Instead, it mostly consists of photos from the ’80s and ’90s, where it’s donned by off-duty models and New York City muses completely nonchalantly—with jeans and a tee or a black turtleneck and matching pencil skirt. To make leopard print work, it has to appear effortless. No one managed to do just that better than Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy.