Leave it to Balenciaga’s Nico­las Ghesquière and Michael Kors to offer up a prac­ti­cal les­son in acces­soriz­ing with a sin­gle neck­lace. These images are from their pre-fall 2009 shows (all the images are from Style.com):

At Balen­ci­aga, Ghesquière took a shorter (I’m guess­ing about eigh­teen to twenty inches in length) gold chain link neck­lace and placed it under a white button-down or above the col­lar of a blouse or dress. The effect felt tai­lored in most instances and dressed-up but sim­ple and very pretty in the last.

Balen­ci­aga pre-fall 2009

Balen­ci­aga pre-fall 2009

Balen­ci­aga pre-fall 2009

Balen­ci­aga pre-fall 2009

Balen­ci­aga pre-fall 2009

Michael Kors took a sculp­tural neck piece and applied it to a black top or geo­met­ric prints. In each image, take note of how the com­bi­na­tion of color and tex­ture alters your per­cep­tion of the neck­lace. In the first image, the necklace’s archi­tec­tural ori­en­ta­tion is estab­lished, cre­at­ing struc­ture and inter­est on a black void. In the next image, the white metal under­scores the white found in the textile’s pat­tern­ing, and works well with its over­all com­po­si­tion. In the last view, it almost seems as if the the neck­lace is mim­ic­k­ing a sim­i­lar vibe in the rhythm of the dress; here Kors plays with larger ver­sus smaller scales.

Michael Kors pre-fall 2009

Michael Kors pre-fall 2009

Michael Kors pre-fall 2009