Is fashion leaving total black behind? Red, blue, yellow, and green have enlivened many neutral ensembles this season

Among the dandies of the late 19th century in Paris, to enliven the eternally dark formal attire that society imposed, a very simple trick was often used: the touch of color. As Massimiliano Mocchia di Coggiola wrote on his now-defunct blog, for example, Baudelaire, who always dressed in black, wore primrose-colored or yellow gloves and, only on the occasion of funerals, added an «outrageously red» scarf to his outfits.

Even another famous figure from the cabarets of the era, Aristide Bruant, was immortalized by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec wearing black clothes and a glaring red scarf. An ancient lesson that in recent days has returned to these days' Paris Fashion Week, as well as to Milan, where countless outfits appeared animated by very intense touches of color in looks with decidedly more neutral palettes.

The styling trick has been decidedly pervasive across dozens of presentations from very different brands - leading us to conclude that we are indeed facing a new seasonal trend. The master of this tactic was surely Michael Rider at Celine, who managed to dominate the week's rankings without even walking the runway, and whose combination of club ties with diagonal red stripes and light blue shirt invaded every conceivable social feed. Elsewhere, however, the idea of the touch of color found very consistent interpretations across the various shows. But how exactly?

Lucky red

The most recurring color these days among the supporting shades of a week dominated by relatively neutral tones has been red. And specifically a red shirt whose collar emerged from sartorially traditional chromatic ensembles: there was a red shirt paired with a denim suit from Ralph Lauren, red collar and cuffs emerging from under a dark sweater from Willy Chavarria (and there the touches of color were numerous, including yellow), and both from Amiri, and from Louis Vuitton, Junya Watanabe, Kartik Research, Auralee and Kidsuper the combination of a dark men's suit decorated by a layer of intense red was seen. Even from Zegna a red collar emerged from a cream-colored coat.

Elsewhere the red accents remained but took on new forms: a red cap together with a gray suit from Ami Paris, a red jacquard collar on a black coat from Dries Van Noten, a red waistcoat from Yohji Yamamoto, an incredible red jacket also paired with total black in the debut of ssstein by Kiichiro Asakawa, a red knit tank top under a gray tweed suit from Prada and a technical ensemble from Kiko Kostadinov whose edges were decorated with red accents. From Wooyoungmi the red hints were various, but the most notable was the red interior of a reversed shearling jacket.

Moving from the runway to the street, seeing fashion insiders wearing red socks has surely been an underground micro-trend in cognoscenti circles throughout the winter (it had a short life, since no whim is without pretension) while during the fashion weeks red scarves paired with more chromatically moderate looks have become a common sight in Milan and Paris. Even red shoes worn under oversized jeans have emerged as a micro-trend in recent months.

Primary and non-primary colors

Besides red, blue and green have returned as intense color accents. Blue, the eternal constant of menswear, has freed itself from the prisons of navy and now sails toward the brightest directions of cobalt, electric blue, Yves Klein blue and especially that almost burning shade of light blue that takes the name of Dodger. Precisely this (at least according to us) is the shade of those Celine shirts mentioned at the beginning and which, honestly, burn into the retinas of those who look.

But an extremely intense blue was also on the feathers of the tops from Egonlab, or the puffer that one of Mordecai's models in Milan carried in hand as an accessory together with one of the re-engineered camel-colored suits by Ludovico Bruno. At sacai instead there was a brown sweater whose front panel was electric blue and decorated with fringes.

The yellow has also emerged among the protagonists: in the form of a sweater from Magliano, a wool polo hidden under the jacket in Umit Benan's lookbook, a bag from Maison Mihara Yasuhiro and obviously from Dior where the models' wigs were yellow and also the polo shirts decorated with ceremonial crystal shoulder pads. At Lemaire instead a light accent of bright green was preferred, at Soshiotsuki and Dolce&Gabbana there was brown instead, while at Setchu and at Hermès a timid old pink appeared.

Toward a 2026 of vibrant colors?

What strikes the most, scrolling through the various collections of these days, is not so much the triumph of colors but their relative marginalization. We see, in other words, a sort of general agreement in the menswear panorama on a palette that is not necessarily dull, but very mitigated and neutral for this year but interrupted by bright flashes of color. A bit like Jesse Rutherford at the Ernst W. Baker show, where the black outfit was animated by a pair of red gloves like traffic lights.

But we are not in the washed-out times of quiet luxury: the touch of color, almost obligatorily inserted almost everywhere in so many looks, makes us reflect a lot on the tone of undisciplined formality that seems to dominate the season. Think of the evolution of the total black look seen in the wardrobe of many insiders in recent months, which has seen black animated by the unprecedented combo with brown and suede. Even the bi-annual magazine L’Etiquette, a reliable witness to what is chic in Paris today, has declared the combination of black and brown as one of the best of the season. So what have we gotten tired of?

The most likely hypothesis, after the beige storm of recent years, is that certain looks that are too uniform or tone-on-tone, including the total black of fashion insiders, have become, in a word, a bit predictable and banal. We heard an insider proclaim these days that everyone dresses in black only when they don't feel like thinking about how to dress. And, in fact, not even Yohji Yamamoto this season used completely black looks. Perhaps it is true that in dark times we need the optimism and energy of some color. In short, as Dylan Thomas urged a few years after World War II, «do not go gentle into that good night».