You enjoy fashion and want to look hip, interesting and cool, so you tastefully pick out trendy items that like you back. But you don’t wear those items you love because you’re worried that people will think that you’re trying too hard. They might think that… you care too much about what people think. Oh, the irony!

I hear this concern about trying too hard quite often, and I don’t understand how it all got so complicated. You don’t need to wear every trend to be trendy. To me, when you wear one or more of the current trends, you are trendy. That’s the long and short of it. So I am absolutely sticking up for the word trendy and consider it a compliment.

Fashion and trends unite us, but it’s style that sets us apart. It’s how you personally style a trend that counts. There is nothing “cookie-cutter” and negative about wearing a trend when you wear it well and make it your own. Sport a trend with confidence, sass and your own special stamp and you’re super stylish in my book.

On the other hand, wear a trend that doesn’t work for your lifestyle, persona, age, or body type and chances are high that you will look like you’re trying too hard. That’s when the trend is wearing you rather than you wearing the trend.

And then there is your environmental norm. Sometimes people feel they won’t fit in if they are the only early adopter of new fashions. This is more irony — it is choosing not to wear new trends that is the conformist option in these situations — but I do understand that the environmental norm is powerful and sometimes it just isn’t worth the effort to challenge it. Just be sure you aren’t confusing your individual norm with the environmental norm.

I keep coming back to the main reason I love fashion. It’s fun! Getting dressed in the morning is fun! Keeping abreast with the latest fashion trends is fun! It doesn’t mean that you have to wear them all. Pick and choose the ones you fancy and leave the rest. Liking a fashion trend and making it work for your unique style is in itself a fun challenge. Fashion trends inject the necessary “now” into your style and I think that’s important.

If you look great sporting a trend and it makes you smile, wear it. Of course, effective execution is everything. And everyone has days when they just don’t pull it off. But excluding an item from your repertoire because of what other people might think — isn’t that trying too hard?