The year of the brooch: I tried styling brooches for a week straight

“Placement is everything in the world of brooches.”

Brooches are fickle. And as it turns out, just like dating men – one centimetre can make a big difference. A slight of the brooch up or down, can transform you from museum-gift-shop-jewellery-loving aunty into an emblem of chic. It can also save you from many minor stabbings. Placement is everything. 

When I first pitched this piece, I hadn’t even seen that brooches were a core prediction of the Pinterest Trend Report of 2026. It was instead inspired by my most stylish friends who were already physically pinning; my best friend, Ellen, had been adorning her coat in London with Mother of Pearl pieces for months.

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The perfect time had arrived for my broochification. I’d just landed home in Aotearoa from London for the summer and I was to embark on a homecoming tour following Christmas. It was a worthy challenge: a limited suitcase filled with beloved pieces that needed piercing back to life.

I also hadn’t been home properly for nearly two years. And if I was to say, bump into an ex at a cafe, I needed my heart (a sharp object) on my chest. 

Summer dressing has always been my favourite time of year. A good summer wardrobe consists of essential singlets, quick-drying cottons, an insurance dress, mosquito-warding-but-sweatpant-coded jeans, and now brooches. Here’s how I went about styling them for the first week of 2026.

Day one

Jeans and a nice top, broochified. It was the last day in my home city of Wellington before I embarked on my National Homecoming Tour of New Zealand. AKA, a last chance to wear my most impractical pair of shoes (wooden Jil Sander tie-on sandals) and my heaviest bottoms.

In my search for brooches, I’ve found that a flower brooch is a quintessential charity shop find. This black piece was $3 from the Salvation Army and added to this Commonplace Essentials dress, this easily became a Sandy Liang coded look.

Day two

It was New Year’s Eve Eve. The city of Auckland had cleared out and this all-white ensemble was my own form of a cleansing. I’m completely obsessed with New Zealand brand Rhoda Nunn, and this Rosette Brooch has my heart. It’s polka dots in an unpredictable way, which is what I believe the print should always be.

As I mentioned, placement is everything in the world of brooches. Pinned directly on my boobs, it looked uncomfortably saucy, but moved three centimetres up, it became intentional. My all-white outfit consisted of a Yuhan Wang skirt from Vinted, a recently broken basket bag (victim to a festival the day before), and an old Kowtow singlet. My one regret is that I’ve since seen Emma Muir, the designer behind Rhoda Nunn, pin the Rosette on her hip, and ugh, I wish I’d done it this day.

Day three

An off-grid hippie festival might not be the most optimal crowd for the hard-launch of a vintage French LBD, but despite what advertising agencies tell you, audiences cannot be chosen.

Like I said, a flower brooch is super easy to come across and I picked this one up for £5 from the Bootyfull Car Boot in Hampstead Heath. It’s a secret gem. My friend Grace had also been looking at the same table for brooches, but her flower find was a little too Georgia O’Keeffe for the everyday. The pleated silk of this dress felt too delicate to poke a hole through, so I hacked it by looping the brooch onto the beaded strap. God bless women in STEM.

Day four

Crinkled cottons in the city are a sign of carelessness. At the beach however, they’re a sign of status, of a good day lived on the sand and more. The top tier of this is if your togs are soaking through underneath. Sourced from Vinted, my shell adornment was a celebration of these beach politics.

This dress is the same Commonplace Essentials one that I wore on day one over jeans, and this hat was picked up for less than $1 in a Sakura Recycle shop years ago in Cambodia. I’m not the type to hike when travelling, I’ll instead spend hours researching the best places to shop. Top tip: Japan sends much of their unsold vintage to Cambodia, and you can find some forever pieces in these little Sakura shops.

Day five

A make-shift tie for a sunburnt girl. I’d forgotten the power of the Southern Hemisphere sun and desperately needed to hide my sunburn of shame. This Eastern Shirt from Commonplace Essentials is seriously good. Easy for transitioning from London winter to Kiwi summer, and a daily earner of compliments. Thick cotton btw, very pierceable for a brooch and the hole hides well.

The skirt is Rosie Evans and there’s something fun about pairing a classic piece like a striped button-up with chaos, then topping it all off with a glimmer of gold. This day, we did a whole bunch of nothing except for cruising around beaches and taking way too many digi cam photos to carelessly Airdrop.

Funny story, this Rosie Evans skirt is made of vintage British tea towels, and I’d bought this sample when I was still living in New Zealand. I met my boyfriend about a year later when I moved to London, and months later, we were in his parent’s house in Dorset when I saw one of the tea towels hanging in his kitchen. His mum has bought it from a charity sale. Life works in funny ways.

Day six

On this day, I was off to the joint birthday party of two friends. The evening soundtrack began with my own yelling at my boyfriend for struggling to zip up my top. It was worth it, this outfit felt completely me. A brooch doesn’t have to feel like a kooky moment – just like the best additions to life, it can immediately feel like part of the design.

The top is an old-season Paris Georgia piece that I owned for years in orange, and when I saw the white version come up on Designer Wardrobe, I immediately sent a low-ball offer. She accepted. Karma for the yelling and this offence came for me later that night when the placement of the shell stabbed me in the boob.

Day seven

Island dressing, modernised. This is perhaps not the classic linen uniform that people pack for Waiheke Island, but there’s such joy in being the most overdressed person sometimes. This outfit features the ultimate thong from Underlena, Bikini Top from Rhoda Nunn and my £5 Bootyfull Car Boot brooch that I thought I’d lost on New Year’s Eve. Fun and flirty. Sequins are often the material of choice for a midnight countdown kiss, but I actually just wore this to get coffee. 2026, the year of glamorising the mundane.

Failures, findings and forgiveness to pin

I’d made one big mistake. In this week of brooches, I’d fallen into tunnel vision and forgotten the point. The magic of brooches is that you can add, add, add. As mentioned in the Pinterest Trend Report, “There’s a new way to wear your heart on your sleeve.” We break hearts and will have many parts of our own broken through life, so we might as well choose when and where the pierce hits (never the tit). 

That brings me to my revealing discovery: my hesitancy to poke holes. Listen, I’ve always been bashful with my clothing. Cobblers are shocked when I bring my shoes in. I believe that beautiful clothes should be worn for all occasions and to near death. Yet, why was it so hard to adorn fabrics with a new sign of life? 

I’m a control freak, I am the dictator on group trips, who typically won’t be completely happy with the AirBnB unless I’ve found it. So perhaps, learning to live with a few intentional holes in my wardrobe is good. And just like a tactical vomit stain may never fully come out of a white party dress, maybe a pin hole will be a new remembrance of good times this year.

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