Strategizing an outfit for a concert, the 40-year-old communications professor at UNC Wilmington had gotten as far as a black stretch-knit dress from Susana Monaco. “But in photos on Instagram, a plain black dress doesn’t pop,” she said. Jones strapped on a $188 leather belt with an etched silver buckle, debonairly looping it around her dress’s slinky fabric. In the ’80s and ’90s, branded Gucci and Chanel belt buckles served as signal flares for yuppie shoppers. And gutsy dressers are cinching and sculpting sweaters, dresses, shawls and blouses with no belt loops at all.

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Persons: KELLY JONES, Susana Monaco, ”, Jones, Halston, Tiffany, Elsa Peretti, Gucci, Miranda Kerr, Jennifer Lopez Organizations: UNC Wilmington, “