Jermaine Stewart was right, you know. We don’t have to take our clothes off to have a good time. I’m talking about fashion, naturally. If you want to tap into the most fun update happening in style right now, you can do so without changing a single item of clothing. Because the party is happening in your jewellery box, not your wardrobe.

Fun jewellery is back, and I am thrilled. I love a hoop earring as much as anyone, but I think it is time to admit to ourselves that the hoop has got a little tired at this point. For several months last year, the biggest thing that was happening in earrings was that the precise shape of the hoop had changed a tiny bit. Instead of being shaped like car tyres, they had a melted quality, heavier at the bottom. Before that, they had shrunk slightly, into huggie hoops that tightly clasped the lobes. They had switched from gold to silver, and sometimes to a combination of gold and silver. To put this another way: I think we can agree that we have explored all possible avenues of what a hoop earring could look like at this juncture.

The hoop earrings and gold chains that have been our default sparkle setting came into our lives along with athleisure. Hoops and chains are pieces you can wear with a hoodie. They performed a very useful function in bringing how we wear jewellery bang up to date. Romance, social status and wealth are all tangled up in the history of jewellery – engagement rings, solitaire necklaces and tennis bracelets are love tokens. As for diamonds being a girl’s best friend? Marilyn, I think we both know it’s a little more complicated than that. The new age of minimalist modern pieces, with their architectural lines and absence of dazzle, reinvented jewellery as pieces you could buy and wear just because you liked the look, without sentiment or emotional ties.

It is time now to take that free-spirited, independent mindset and layer in some colour and quirkiness. If the era of hoops and chains was a reflection of casual wear, the rise of individualism and colour in jewellery is part of how vintage or vintage-look fashion is becoming the dominant aesthetic. If you look as if you’ve dug something out of the attic or found it on a bric-a-brac market stall, then you are doing style right.

There are so many ways you can make jewellery fun again, and most of them start with pieces you already have. Two or three simple necklaces of different lengths take on a whole new vibe if you wear them together. This look has been around for a while, mostly in the form of two pendant necklaces worn at the same time, so they hang in two downward arrows. Lately I’ve been copying Miuccia Prada’s look at her Milan fashion week show. She was wearing two bead-style necklaces, the kind without pendants, that hang in a soft curve rather than an arrow: a short one of glinting jewels, a longer one of lustrous dark pearls.

Round and polished, hoop earrings have become so generic that they have nothing to say, except that you remembered to put them in. Why not embrace earrings that have a point of view? Start with something in a colour that picks out a shade in your outfit, and when you get more confident you can pick one that contrasts instead. Your earrings can be fun, silly, surprising.

Quirky has been a dirty word in fashion in the quiet luxury years, but it is making a comeback. Weave a magpie’s nest of trinkets around your wrist, or choose one huge cuff. Wear a brooch: on your beanie, on your coat, to adorn the tie belt on a cardigan. Great fashion should tell everyone in the room that you have just walked into that you are a smart and interesting person. Why hide your light under a bushel? Time to let your sparkles sing your praises.

Styling assistant: Sam Deaman. Hair and makeup: Sophie Higginson using Bumble & Bumble and Victoria Beckham beauty. Model: Tomiris at Milk. Jumper, £175, Rise & Fall. Brooch, £75, and earrings, £95, both Essentiel Antwerp