There are enough SEO-optimized listicles written about the perfect white T-shirts, shoes, or socks to fill the digital version of the Grand Canyon. And we’ve all heard the Yohji Yamamoto quote about black clothes. Yes, black is mysterious, cool, edgy, powerful. Hooray.
But what about brown?
Brown is the hardest-working hue in the world of clothing. Neither as singular as black nor as obvious as white, brown gives garments nuance while also complementing pretty much every imaginable shade. You can wear it with everything, anything, in almost any circumstance. And yet, it’s a color most often relegated to poop jokes or digs about UPS uniforms.
This is a disservice to brown (and to UPS employees). The beauty of brown is that it lives, ironically, in a grey area. It is simultaneously a neutral and a signature shade capable of depth. Whereas fellow so-called neutrals black and white are extremes on a spectrum, brown isn’t fully committed. Brown encompasses everything from pale beige to dark chocolate, with a wide world between those two tentpoles.
There’s a modesty to brown. Unlike red or blue or yellow, it’s not historically associated with royalty or wealth. It’s the color of work, of military fatigues and twill Dickies trousers and Carhartt carpenter jeans. Brown is the anchoring force, the inelegant glue that holds the wardrobe together. So inelegant, in fact, that some areas of well-to-do dress still operate by an unspoken “no brown in town” rule: dressing for the city means dressing in black or blue or grey. Brown is for hunting and farming and other proletarian affairs. Or so they think.
In fact, brown is a rainbow of shades. And there is perhaps no better reflection of this far-reaching appeal than faded brown garments, which are heavily represented in the Fall/Winter 2025 season. Kapital’s worn-out dungarees, Camiel Fortgens’ fuzzy alpaca cardigan, Casey Casey’s washed jacket, and the slipper-soft Sperry boat shoes recently designed by hip retailer Colbo demonstrate the mutability of brown with texture both innate and intentional. The only thing as gratifying as a faded brown cotton — seams revealing a bit of white where darker brown has worn away — is a soft brown knit whose nep reveals the tone’s depth. Although, in my book, they face stiff competition from the burgeoning collective of makers, from Taiga Takahashi to MAN-TLE, dabbling in the dorozome mud dye practiced for centuries on the island of Amami Ōshima, which yields a deep brown that softens with wear like denim.
So, brown can stand out. But it also fits in. It is the connective tissue in the soft-smart wardrobes of designers like Lauren Manoogian, Gabriela Coll, and Sono. Here, brown and its many permutations flit among shades of grey, washed-out blacks, dribs and drabs of indigo, red, and green, pulling it all together into a single picture of laidback louche. The humility of brown mutes the indulgence of A.PRESSE’s soft suede shirts and Cristaseya’s handmade Italian shirts, even as a slight stripe.
The good news is that we’ve quietly stepped into the golden age of brown. Even beyond FW25, an incredible spread of collections put forth the brown’s expressiveness. Compare the rich dark brown of Ranra Spring/Summer 2026, both urbane and shabby, to nonnative’s washed-out hue made from dyed, treated, and twisted textures that bring out brown’s true character. You want to reach out and touch these clothes because they are brown — because variated hues make it obvious how good they might feel, how easy they might be to wear.
Any discussion of brown clothes would be incomplete without mentioning their master. If Yohji Yamamoto is the patron saint of black and Calvin Klein the king of tighty-white, Evan Kinori is the reigning champ of brown. If Beuys positioned brown as art, the San Franciscan designer has recontextualized brown as a baroque luxury, his collections quite literally a full-spectrum analysis. It’s all here in Kinori's work: clay hemp, coffee-tinted wool-linen, pale walnut-dyed cotton, taupe Lady White Co. jersey, acorn-tinted suede Tricker’s shoes.
What can brown do for you? Turns out, a whole lot.
SHOP OUR FAVORITE PRODUCTS
Highsnobiety has affiliate marketing partnerships, which means we may receive a commission from your purchase. Want to shop the products our editors actually love? Visit the HS Style Guide for recs on all things fashion, footwear, and beauty.
