10 Trends We Wish Would Die Already

These utility shoes are designed to be sole-hugging and ultra-lightweight. We're not advocating fashion over comfort -- OK, we kinda are. When you wear shoes that make you look squat, thick-ankled and like a rubber ball just melted around your foot, you're in definite danger of joining the ranks of those people who eschew personal relationships in favor of a closer spiritual connection with their miniature train sets or scrunchie collections. Hey, we like comfort, but we like looking good, too.

How much can some thread and a pair of scissors cost? We really thought mummy wrapping went out with the pharaohs. Peek-a-boo fashions have been around forever, but the goal is to come up with an attractive way to remove a portion of a garment to leave a tantalizing bit of skin showing, not construct a garment to look like you ran out of fabric, decided to tan yourself in decorative wedges or were too lazy to buy a pattern.

If you've got a great body, this can look almost good, but for most women, it's reminiscent of the thermal underwear gold miners wore in those old black and white Westerns. Sometimes with fashion, less is more, but this is one instance where less is definitely not enough. Mommy's rule No. 78: Always put your pants on before you go out. It's the polite thing to do.

We can understand being nostalgic for those carefree days of childhood, but when you cram an adult body into a garment devised for an adolescent, you're stretching things -- literally. If you want to recapture some youthful zeal, there are better ways to do it than running around looking like a daycare refugee.

Accessories are designed to enhance your look, not obscure it. Where layered statement jewelry can create a focal point if you keep everything else simple, overdo it, and you'll look like a garage sale fashionista with magpie tastes and more closet space than good sense. When layering jewelry or anything else, if you think it may be too much, it probably is.

How do you launder designer jeans that are so raggedy they look like they're disintegrating while you're wearing them? If your clothes have to be falling apart for you to look pulled together, there's something terribly wrong somewhere. Unless you're painting or taking out the trash, leave this design trend in the rag bag where it belongs.

Oh, come on now. How could this ever stop reminding us of Dorothy and her ruby slippers? If you want your legs to look long (and who doesn't?), there's no reason to truncate them with socks, booties or other foot gear that will emphasize your knees, the girth of your thighs or your overall weight. We're thinking that even savvy amazons, ballerinas and long-distance runners with great legs will avoid this one.

OK, so you're a high-powered professional type who entertains constantly and can't take the time to change clothes between the gym and your evening commitments. In an inspired moment, you devise a plan to save time by wearing your sweatpants gussied up with a couple of decorative doodads you carry around in your gym bag. Ta-da, instant elegance.

No matter what fabric you make them out of or what you stick on them, including an exorbitant price tag, you just can't make sweatpants into evening or luxury attire. Sorry, you'll just have to wait until you get home to get truly comfy.

Choosing clothing and accessories to create a look is an art (and a moving cultural target), so most fashionistas can be forgiven for missing the mark every once in a while. The one absolute requirement for good and sensible dressing, though, is not to wear anything that can actually hurt you or someone else. Spiky heels of 5 inches or more definitely fall into the excessive and dangerous category. Sitting out the season with a broken ankle because you fell off your shoes would be a shame -- and embarrassing, too.

Ladies, one of the big complaints of petite women everywhere is that they look disproportionately short in the waist area. This is a polite euphemism for dumpy. High-waist garments, especially when coupled with different colored tops, create this illusion when worn by most women, short or not, so it's hard to understand why anyone would choose them. High-waist pants were designed for models, and models are among the very few people who can pull off wearing them. The rest of us should be spending our wardrobe dollars on clothes that actually flatter our bodies.