Come Shopping With me Edition II: Pins part I, The Silver Edit

I love all jewelry. But there’s a very specific kind I’ve loved most. The pieces with presence. Something with color, texture, weight, a little visual punch that makes you look twice. A lot of people think presence comes from an earring or a ring, and sometimes it does. But the most overlooked, hardest-working piece of jewelry in the box is the pin. Or the brooch. Same thing, different name.

If you dress simply, and most of us do, this is the move. One vintage silver brooch on a plain tee or a wool coat, and suddenly the whole thing looks intentional. You didn’t add more. You just chose better.

For me, it started with one vintage silver horseshoe pin. I found it while sourcing for Miley Cyrus’s 2014 MTV Unplugged performance featuring Madonna, and ended up keeping it for myself. I pinned it to my trench coat one morning, forgot about it, and then noticed that every time I left the house in that trench, someone stopped me to ask where I got it. The trench was not the thing. The pin was. I never took it off the coat. And then I bought another, and pinned that one to a different coat. And then another, and another. Here we are.

Brooches, if you have a few to rotate in your closet, are the easiest styling hack and the most personal thing you can do to a wardrobe.

Another thing worth knowing: pins are not just for lapels. Some of my favorite ways to wear them:

• pinned high on a blazer shoulder, almost touching the collarbone (think 1940s editor)

• cinching the waist of an oversized sweater into a little nipped silhouette

• holding a silk scarf in place at the neck, or knotted around the hips

• on a tee shirt. Yes, a plain white tee shirt. Try it.

• through the placket of a men’s oxford, in place of a tie clip

• on a tote bag strap, or the body of the bag, if you’re feeling whimsy

Minimum effort. Maximum lift. The fashion math is unbeatable.

The other thing I love about pins: they’re sneakily diagnostic. When I see a stranger wearing a good one, I clock it the way I clock a great watch or a really specific shoe. It’s a tell. It says this person has a point of view, and they edited the outfit on purpose. It works on every single person, regardless of budget.

I went so deep on brooches that this edit became two posts. This week is Part I, The Silver Edit, focused on the metal itself: Mexican sterling, modernism, and the small utilitarian outliers I never edit out. Next week is Part II, The Motif Edit, focused on what your pin actually depicts. Think horseshoes, butterflies, moons, snakes, dogwoods, and a few perfect fishbones.

Quick aside, because I cannot stop noticing this: the most stylish men right now are all wearing brooches and have been for the past few years.

The brooch is the new pocket square. It’s the new tie bar. It’s the new lapel flower. Except it’s better, because it’s not a uniform, it’s a fingerprint.

The thesis: a brooch is one of the last remaining ways to demonstrate taste without saying anything out loud, the brooch is what makes you look like you.

Below is the edit. Everything is shoppable, organized by mood and theme. I’m being honest about which ones I actually wear and which ones I own very similar version of, because I couldn’t help myself.