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Serious times call for serious measures, or at least, some serious buckles. If every brand has a signature element that makes them instantly recognizable to those in the know, ALYX’s would be the buckle. But not just any buckle: Confidently crafted of no-nonsense metal or durable plastic, depending on the style, and dubbed the Rollercoaster, their safety buckle serves as the focal point for the brand’s belts, bags, bracelets and beyond. Their products have even been seen on Gigi Hadid, A$AP Rocky and Kendall Jenner, to name a few. Such a rugged fastener used to be relegated to camping backpacks and outdoorsy vests in sporting goods stores—which is the idea.

The designers have spoken. Again. Doesn’t it seem like there’s a fashion week every matter of weeks? The upside of fast fashion means your new favorite trends may technically be from the future, but you don’t have to wait until then to adopt them. While this latest release from beloved brands won’t hit stores for a few months, there’s no trend here you can’t start sporting right now. Wear now, buy later? Or more like, live in the moment and think about later later on.

If it seemed a little early to be thinking ahead to spring during the Fall 2016 fashion week, that’s because it was very early. But fashion designers were thinking about this spring as of last spring, if not before then, and fashion month in Paris let us take full stock of what made people perk up and take notice at the shows (and on the internet), from expensive-looking beauty to semi-grungy bandanas. Here are the fashion month moments that will flavor, if not define, the Spring ’17 season. 

We’re accustomed to associated the word trend with colors (the reign of millennial pink is pandemic), cuts (Summer ’16 is the season of the off-the-shoulder top), and wearable accessories (chokers, anyone?). But what about less wearable accessories, like ones you carry or even those you were born with?

With “fashion week” taking place all year long and fast fashion threatening to eradicate couture entirely, there’s hardly such thing as “brand-new” anymore. Case in point: Denman Gvasalia’s Vetements was deemed played out just weeks after sending throngs of people into a frenzy for their exaggerated hoodies and reworked jeans. (Now they’re teaming up with 18 different, varyingly surprising collaborators, including Juicy Couture, Champion, Manolo Blahnik and Levi’s, for their Spring ’17 collection.) With that in mind, here are six brands so fresh they’re just making waves or they’re just starting to really gain some well-deserved traction. Either way, you’ll want something from them in a matter of months. Then it’s on to the next one!

The fashion world is backwards, forever existing in the future, a post-present reality always roughly four to six months away. So while we gear our psyches and closets up for spring, designers and their dedicated packs have just wrapped up the big reveal of this coming fall’s collections. Let’s look ahead with them. Typically hefty leather, wool, and fur aside, we can take these superficial lessons and apply them to our own current-day lives, at least figuratively speaking.

If the cannabis leaf has started to experience a fashion moment over the course of the last couple years, thanks to Mara Hoffman’s greenery-filled Spring ’15 collection, for example, or Love Leather’s heavily emblazoned bombers and mesh tanks, circa 2014, its time has officially come.

Wipe those rules off your face!

I hate rules. Except for the rules I’ve made up for myself, like always keep an open mind; lightly smile at people whenever possible, except for say, unwanted suitors; and don’t go on gratuitous multi-day party binges that render you incapacitated on the couch, you face-planted on your couch and in a burrito.. Then there are the so-called, unofficial rules of beauty, imposed upon us by women’s magazines, beauty editors, trend-forecasters, moms, sometimes even your friends, and potentially worst of all, ourselves. 

While the arguable majority of women—or at least those of the “basic” variety—are merely doing their best to look “pretty” and milking their smooth blowouts into day three, it requires a degree of daring to unintentionally launch a trend or depart from the accepted beauty norms. When people take on an aesthetic stance that doesn’t necessarily appeal to the masses, things get audacious and absorbing. In the spirit of appreciating untraditional beauty’s recent spear-headers, here are the most noteworthy unofficially “prohibited” beauty moments in recent history. They're not the most extreme: No neck-extending Masai chokers, 16th-century waist-suppressing iron corsets, bound feet of the Manchu women or ear-stretching gauges of teenage mall rats here. But they have had the biggest effect on the masses, inspiring admirers and eager imitators to follow suit.

It's not necessarily ideal. But once in awhile, it has to happen. Whether you’re a late adolescent without a welcoming, parent-free home, an adult with a major case of arrested development (or nosy roommates), or you merely have the horniness level of a teenage boy, every now and then this tricky situation presents itself. You’re out with the person who gets you all atwitter at say, a restaurant and you suddenly find yourselves both so lusty for each other you need to go bang. Right at that very moment. In say, the bathroom of this hypothetical restaurant. Sorry, restaurant!

In 2005, Alexander Wang, a recent attendee of Parsons, launched his own knitwear label, a line of slouchy cashmere sweaters in possession of the cool factor. Two years later, his ready-to-wear officially arrived, via Fall 2007 New York fashion week, and critics praised the promise of the 23-year-old's sloppy, streetwise aesthetic, sure to appeal to party girls and downtown socialites. That it did, and then some.

Forget about the "new black" or old black . The purpose of wearing black isn't just to look magazine-editor "chic." Perhaps you're feeling a little morose. Or you want to embrace your inner goth teenager. Or you don't want to have to worry about getting a dirty. There are some days when color just feels wrong (too much on the eyes!), and the saturation of the darkest shade in the spectrum is so right.