Style's New Year's Eve Resolutions

Style's New Year's Eve Resolutions

Here at MTV, the Style team is definitely looked to for fashion and beauty advice by sheer virtue of our occupation. I mean, who better to field your style queries than the girls who are knee-deep in it, right? Whether it's where to score the best vintage finds or what liquid liner applicator is best for a novice, we're always open to sorting out our friends' and coworkers' fash problems, BUT that doesn't mean we're 100 percent diligent about taking our own advice. Hold the gasps, guys; we're humans, too, and thus, we have faults. But what better time than the top of a new year to turn over a new leaf? As a crew, we've compiled our most pressing style resolutions for 2012.

WEAR BRAIDS IN NEW WAYS:

If you're the kind of person who prefers to roll out of bed and start your day or you've scheduled your morning routine down to the millisecond, it's hard to find time to experiment with your hair at all, let alone develop the dexterity needed to braid it yourself. BUT whether we like it or not, 2012 is shaping up to be the year of the braid, and we will not let ourselves get left behind. Those of us who haven't switched up our tonsorial routine since before Justin Timberlake had a solo career (i.e., everyone but Andi, who gets to say things like "It's really easy!" when actually referring to creating some inhumanly complicated zigzag-track French braided updo with its own legislature are determined to carve out all the hours and YouTube tutorials it may take to perfect the self-fishtail.

MOISTURIZE DISGUSTO FEET BEFORE BED

We don't know about you, but we are kind of really terrible to our feet. They walk us around the city, wait in line with us for our daily Venti cups, and bear with the teetering heels we subject them to on the reg. And yet, we rarely have the decency to throw them a drip of lotion from time to time. If you have time to brush your teeth every day, you have time to moisturize your feet  I'm looking at my right foot right now, and along with the revolting blueish purple hue my poor circulation is providing as a backdrop, it is so steeped in hardness and dry patches and CRACKING that I'm not even going to wait for the 2012 ball to drop to start on this one. Gross.

WEAR A JUMPSUIT

This one is actually harder than it seems. Without hesitation, we each have been known to rock a romper 'til the rims fall off and maybe even venture into catsuit territory if a themed party so deemed it necessary, but to dive into full-fledged JUMPSUIT waters? Especially one with a head-to-toe print situation like this here vaguely Keith Haring-inspired wrap front jumpsuit from ASOS? That's another beast entirely. There's just some sort of mental block that makes us give a little side-eye to every long printed jumpsuit we meet, something that just feels both infantile and wallpaper-y. But when you get down to it, given how fabulously conspicuous and smacking of '90s heyday Yo! MTV Raps the style is, this should really be totally up our alley.

GET A HAIRCUT MORE THAN ONCE A YEAR

While we'd like to have you believe our pack runs way long-haired as a calculated choice or even a staff prerequisite, our waist-length tresses are really just the result of only cutting our hair once every 365 days. Well, we can feel that all changing in 2012. Maybe we won't go so far as a high-maintenance pixie cut like Carey Mulligan, but this year marks the beginning of at least a biannual trim if not some real experimentation. Plus, the healthy polished look and feel of our newly shorn ends will make doubling that slice of our budgets all worth it.


WEAR MORE COLOR

Sure, black will always be sleek and slimming and refined and undeniably in fashion, but real talk, it's also totally lazy. Anyone can pile on the onyx and look chic, but there's a finesse and expertly discerning eye needed to wear color well. For 2012, we, as a unit, resolve to hone that skill. Plus, what better way to drudge yourself out of the winter doldrums than by traipsing into work clad in this brightly striated House of Holland silk dress from Opening Ceremony? Wayyy more fun/less depressingly prescriptive than a Vitamin D lamp, AMIRITE?

DRINK MORE WATER

While this one may feel totally mom-ish and pointer finger-wagging, it's an undeniable fact that healthy choices yield great beauty results. Drinking plenty of water every day flushes your body of harmful toxins, improves circulation and blood flow, and thereby allows for a more radiant, luminous complexion  We're not saying we'll be affixing our mouths to the tap nozzle or anything, but the routine IV of espresso will either be replaced or supplemented with eight glasses of water a day.

TRY A BOW TIE

In much the same way that Peter Pan collars were mostly uncharted frontiers at the top of 2011, so are bow ties this upcoming year. A few bold style bloggers and fash-forward celebs have tested the necktie waters this year. We anticipate the masculine-yet-twee accessory to catapult to mainstream status in 2012, and thus, are feeling the crunch to hop on the trend ASAP


FIND AN EYE CREAM

If you think finding an eye cream seems like one of those things that you shouldn't have to worry about until you're older, you'd be wrong. Slathering the sensitive skin below your oculars in luxurious ointments is 100 percent a preventative measure to maintain your skin's youthful elasticity. Since we intend to keep looking like dimes until a truly unnatural age, this is the year we each track down one that works and start applying it religiously lest we turn into real-life Chicks with Buscemeyes (no offense to our man, Steve Buscemi). Let the hunt begin!

WEAR MORE JEWELRY

We all drench ourselves in accessories pretty much every day—multi-finger rings, layers of necklaces, a gang of pins cohabiting one blazer lapel—but somehow bracelets are usually the article of jewelry that falls to the wayside. Maybe it's because the nature of our occupation shackles us to our keyboards, and thus, the jingle jangle of too much wrist ice can get distracting. Whatever the reason, 2012 is the year we build a bridge and get over it because in the big bad land of accessories, the arm party is KING.

BE MORE ADVENTUROUS ABOUT LEGWEAR

For years, tights and leggings were just simple hosiery options, just a means by which we could continue wearing dresses and shorts and tunics into the colder months, thereby cutting the size of our wardrobes in half (LOL yea, right). Now legwear is its own mammoth class of vestment, growing more and more inventive every day. Gone are the days of sheer vs. opaque and a handful of neutral colors to choose from. Instead, the patterns, hybrids of transparencies, colors, and materials now outnumber the national population of Beliebers