The sweater dress is no doubt a winter essential for dress lovers. We’re willing to bet that many of our readers who live in colder climates are wearing one right now.

The sweater dress is easily one of our most-loved styles, but we all know that even our all-time favorites need spicing up now and then.
If you’re looking to switch up the style of your sweater dress, allow Hilary Duff to show you a little trick she demonstrated on the streets of Beverly Hills about a week ago.
Hilary Duff is wearing her usual sweater dress, meaning with a pair of opaque tights and knee-high boots. But then she added that studded collar necklace, and suddenly, her whole outfit didn’t look so “usual” anymore! :

It’s such an easy, simple, yet effective styling trick that we want to smack our foreheads and wonder why we didn’t think of it ourselves.
Maybe we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves because Hilary Duff’s sweater dress already has that studded collar. It’s this Gryphon rugby stripe dress, which you can wear with or without the necklace piece.
An optional sequined collar adds unexpected shine to a striped sweater dress, creating a unique mix of posh and prep.

You can get Hilary Duff’s dress or do your mixing and matching, starting with these collar necklaces.

Slip them over these striped and cable-knit sweater dresses.

You’ll achieve the look a la Hilary Duff with the sweater dresses above, but it’ll also be fun to experiment with a printed sweater dress, a flared skirt sweater dress, and even a slouchy sweater dress. Check these out:

Ready to get the look?