Accessories make dressing up fun

How many accessories is too many accessories?

Harriet, by email

When you rattle? When you have no spare hands and you haven't left the house yet? When your accessories weigh more than you? How long is a piece of string, Harriet? And does that piece of string have a Chanel logo attached to it?

There's no simple answer to your question, I'm afraid, for the simple reason that different numbers of accessories work for different people and that, of course, it depends on the accessories. The glorious Iris Apfel, for one, looks incredible in her daily look of 10 tonnes of accessories. This is how I imagine Iris's mind goes in the morning as she gets ready to leave her house: "Right, keys, wallet, phone? Check, check, check. Three giant necklaces of brightly coloured giant wooden beads? Check. Tribal beaded chest plate? Check. Seventeen gigantic wooden bangles? Check. Four massive rings? Check. Face-swallowing spectacles? Check. We are good to go!"

At the other end, Phoebe Philo has become the classiest fashion icon of her generation for her next-to-no- accessories look as part of her too-cool-to-carry-anything minimalist style, save only, at most, a brightly coloured Céline clutch.

So far, so unhelpful, right? Well, help is on its way, for I am going to teach you the only trick you need to know about accessories, and that is that you should just have fun with them. Accessories are like the sprinkles on the ice-cream scoop of your outfit, the little touches of joy that you can dabble with to brighten up the practicalities of that necessary jumper, that somewhat boring but useful skirt. Dangly earrings, vintage brooches, ridiculous hair pieces (I will always love a jewelled or, even better, feathered alice band), neon bracelets, oversized cocktails rings – these are all the stuff of joy. Enjoy them, play with them, wear them in a way that feels comfortable for you. Trust yourself to know when you have crossed the line from "stylish, fabulous, fun" to "cluttered, ridiculous, awkward".

For example, I personally feel too freighted down if I have tonnes of accessories on, love them as I do, and find that some combinations – such as a scarf and dangly earrings – are frankly a health risk. Some, such as giant bracelets, really don't work with my job, as they bang against the keyboard something chronic. So I just end up taking them off and putting them next to my computer, then accidentally throwing them away when they get lost in the various piles of random papers I keep about my desk in order to improve my feng shui. Ditto with rings, which is a shame, as there are some totally brilliant, cheap giant cocktail rings on the high street, but I've now thrown away more rings than Elizabeth Taylor.

So what I generally do instead is go for one big-hitter, like a posh bag, or one giant necklace, or one totally amazing alice band, rather than puffing myself out with loads that I'll then unthinkingly shed during the day and lose.

Incidentally, and somewhat off the topic, but this is my page and I can do what I damn well please, I've started doing that with food. For pretty much my entire life, I have been a vegetarian, the full kind – no meat, no fish. And this has worked out just fine for the past 30 odd years, but here's the thing with the vegetarian diet: in my long experience, I was either starving or bloated. This may just be because I am a greedy muppet, but in order to sate my maw of an appetite, I'd have to eat so much bulk in vegetarian food that, after nearly every meal, I could have played Tweedle Dum or Dee with no extra padding.

Recently, though, I decided to make tentative steps to break my vegetarian-ness and have been branching out into seafood. Prawns. Scallops. A bit of crab. That sort of thing. And you know what I discovered as I ate that first plate of grilled prawns? I don't have to eat half as many prawns as I do chickpeas to feel full. I didn't feel starving or stuffed. I felt just fine.

Now, before any angry vegetarians write in about my heresy and betrayal, let me stress again that this was just my experience and not a slur on vegetarianism in general, which I am, still, in the main, I paid-up member of. But let's get back to the really important issue here: accessories. As with prawns, so with accessories. Some people look great overloaded. Some people do brilliantly underloaded. So as my personal preference is for just one fancy thing, perhaps a giant prawn necklace, Schiaparelli-style, would be the thing now – and I'll leave the rest to achieve some kind of happy, not-stuffed, not-starved, maybe ever-so-slightly fishy medium.

Post your questions to Hadley Freeman, Ask Hadley, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Email ask.hadley@theguardian.com