If you’re simultaneously obsessed with the latest micro-trends and too intimidated to test them out, you’ve come to the right place. This is Ways to Wear, a monthly series where editor Eliza Huber offers a dose of outfit inspiration centered around current trends that feel intriguing yet overwhelming at the same time. Consider it your guide to actually wearing the coolest items of the moment, no matter how puzzling they might appear at first.

As someone who tests out trends for a living, it’s rare for one to stump me. I’ll wear anything once (and probably a few more times after that), whether it’s underwear as pants on the streets of New York or a whale tail. One of the only themes in fashion that’s ever truly thrown me is snakeskin. I can wear a leopard-print bikini or a cow-print coat, but something about snakeskin has always felt especially intimidating and difficult to style in any sort of nonchalant manner.

With that, when I started to notice the print gathering momentum after the spring/summer 2023 runway shows last September—it was especially prevalent in Khaite and 16Arlington’s collections for the season—I knew that it was time to crack the code and finally figure out how to wear snakeskin right. Four items, five looks, and plenty of discarded combinations later, I can, at last, say that I’m no longer intimidated by spring’s fastest-growing print. In fact, I’m more than ready to embrace it. Prepare yourself for the same conclusion by scrolling down.