How to wear a studded hoodie

A studded hoodie can go two ways: quiet armour, or fancy dress. The difference is almost never the hoodie, it is everything you put next to it. Here is what we have learned photographing ours a few hundred times.

Rule one: let the metal be the only event. If the hoodie carries thirty-five gold stars, nothing else on you should sparkle. Plain black trousers, raw denim, a flat leather boot. Jewellery stays small and gold, or it stays home. The moment a second material starts competing, the hardware stops reading as design and starts reading as decoration.

Rule two: keep the volume honest. An oversized hoodie needs a straight or slim bottom half to hold its shape; put it over something equally wide and the whole silhouette collapses. With the Celestial skirt it works because the skirt is fitted at the waist. With wide cargos it does not.

Rule three: daylight is your friend. Gold on washed black is at its best in raking light, which means late afternoon rather than a nightclub. If you are dressing for a dark room, go navy: the stars glow instead of shouting.

And the answer to the question everybody asks first: yes, it goes in the washing machine. Inside out, laundry net, 30 degrees, no tumble dryer. The metal is set on internal washers precisely so you never have to think about it again.