Tell Me About It, Stud: The Return of Heavy Metal

The 80s revival traveled a long runway before taking off, but now it's airborne and wasting no time transporting studs, grommets and other metal hardware back into fashion. Like all powerful trends, this one jumped from season to season (and back and forth between men's and women's runways), sprouting new heads like a beast from Greek mythology: in the last six months alone, Hedi Slimane and Nichola Formichetti draped boys in hyper-studded leather jackets (for Vogue Hommes, Japan); designers as different as Naeem Khan and Burberry's Christopher Bailey showed metal-studded collections; and Lady Gaga danced through her latest video, Telephone, wearing little more than a studded jacket, bra and panties.

These were great fashion statements, but some (Lady Gaga's ensemble, in particular) worked better as costumes than they would in real life. The items shown above offer more realistic ways to add some metallic clout to your day-to-day wardrobe: Alex and Chloe's pyramid-studded double ring, in coated brass; Bottega Veneta's gorgeous (and, believe it or not, relatively affordable) men's bag with laced grommets; and customized sneakers by Gienchi Gap (contact through Facebook)–the pair shown belongs to Kate Loves Me creator, Pelayo Diaz. FA2L loves items like these: distinctive, well-made and, paradoxically, both of-the-moment and timeless. Further proof that when the going gets tough, the tough just turn it into fashion.