espite all the tassel jewelry in 2015, style in Twenty-Sixteen will be much about tassels, too. Truthfully, trends typically don’t have a two-to-three year life span—but this is one that will.

Certainly, for spring/summer, top clothing brands have been near-manic about holding onto their fringe–those shredded edges were everywhere on the runways, here and abroad, on accessories as well as dresses, tops, and jackets.

In jewelry, while at first you may sort of feel you’ve seen this fringe before (in antique, vintage, or estate), for the most part, next season’s modern fringe-y jewels are really fresh. One characteristic I’m seeing a lot with “new fringe” pieces is the varying of tassel lengths, and many zigzag. Silhouetting in this way seems to add a kind of edginess. Another au courant element, for sure, is the use of fringe for hot jewelry fashion categories, for example, ear climbers and cuffs.

Without a doubt, one of my favorite fresh takes on tassels is coming from jewelry designer, Mabel Chong, who clusters together multi-metal strands—gold, sterling, and oxidized silver—and sort of dribbles them over Tahitians in her classic-meets-contemporary necklaces, earrings, and bracelets.

I hope the design community keeps up its creativity with fringe—much in the way the best-of-the-best are able to regularly show us a hoop earring unlike any we’ve seen before. So, you can be sure of another thing: I’ll be watching the threads . . .

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