Hallie Abrams makes the case for brooches as 2026's must-have accessory, showing how to pin them to capes, scarves, bags, and necklaces, or cluster them together. She favors vintage finds and inherited pieces, sourced from thrift stores or your own closet.
I am all about the brooches this season. You saw them all over the red carpets, especially on guys, where there were a bunch, like a cluster of brooches. I've been talking about brooches for years because I have a whole collection. So you want to see one of my most favorite things ever? It is a vintage frog brooch. How cute is he? I love him. But now there's a lot of brooches. If you don't have a collection like mine, you can add to add interest to your outfit, which is super cool and fun. So I love doing it with a cape or scarf to sort of keep it in place. I love adding it to shirts and sweatshirts to sort of give a little half tuck and some interest. I love adding it— sometimes I'll add this to a scarf like as a belt. I love putting it on a bag, like it can go right there on the chain. I like adding it just to a chain necklace, so like if I wanted, I could just hang him on the chain. I don't know, there's so many fun ways, and some of it has to do with how big the actual pin part is. Like, this has a very hefty pin. You can see he's well-loved because he's very bent. This guy has a much smaller pin. Both good, just different. And you could do like a cluster, like I would do 3 of them together. You're also going to see things where it's already built in, where the designer said, I'm going to take the guesswork out for you and I'm going to just put things that look like brooches on. So you're going to see a lot of that. But again, You have something in your closet already, I bet, or your mom or your grandma or your mother-in-law, or go to the thrift store. You can find them and you can make it. You don't have to buy new. If you want to buy new, I'm going to link some cool ones for you, but if not, you have it in your closet already to take your outfit from good to great with stuff you already have.
