Brown Is the New Black. Or Is It?
To the great surprise of everyone but us, brown is having a moment. We've actually written whole essays on why the color brown is the one perfect color for clothing before other outlets began to pick up on how designers picked up on said thesis.
Anyways, the point here being, brown is everywhere right now, prominently featured in just about every show of every fashion capital these past weeks, and even those of seasons prior. But unlike your usual color fads(?) à la brat green or butter yellow, brown is everlasting, trendless, imperishable even, be it knit, calfskin, or cotton.
Saying "brown is the new black" is kinda like saying "black is the new black," really, so omnipresent and appreciated is its manyhued appearance. And yet, there does seem to be a particularly tingly tension around it these days that's setting it apart from its fellow, uncontestedly tasteful peers like navy blue or heather gray.
Known for their discernment in clothes that are somehow both on-the-pulse and timeless, the buyers at MR PORTER must've therefore had an all-out blast leaning into this brown trend — which made it just as fun for us then to mine them for their best shades of it.
Maybe Brown's Just the New... Brown?
No sentence on brown's magnitude in fashion has been uttered without mentioning the leather jacket. Even with some of luxury having opted for alternate vegan textiles by now, the best brown coats will still try to emulate the warm tones, comfortable textures, and supple patina of the real thing. (And now don't go pretending like you've had enough of lightweight outerwear, you know you want more of it.)
Fuzzy, wooly browns are as cozy as they are elegant, an infallible throwover to match the lighter and darker pieces styled around them just the same. This applies to a brown pleated pant, too. There's also this cool, dapper allure to it, without it evoking quite the same seriousness as a similarly cut, black pair of slacks.
You can think what you want of all-brown outfits; of suddenly dyeing all things "chocolate" or "mocha mousse." But sorry, you can't go through life not owning a nice piece of earth-colored luggage, like Tom Ford's weekender. And while Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough's debut at LOEWE made a compelling case for brown suede briefcases, their predecessor's Puzzle design is a modern icon of accessories, all the more so in this beige-tinged mud tone.
Having arrived at the bottom floor of one's outfit, brown footwear, too, is not even a matter of contemporariness but of good sense, frankly. It would have been so easy to just list a mound of loafers here, the likes of which you should already own. But a brown suede sneaker, or a hiking boot deluxe? If you don't, you sure should.
All this to say, let's let black be black and brown be brown. How's that sound?
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