“Clothes have more important offices than merely to keep us warm; they change our view of the world and the world’s view of us.” – Virginia Woolf, Orlando
During decades of dressing, I’ve had clothes that gave me confidence and equally those that made me feel miserable.
My earliest memory of loving a dress takes me back to age four or five. The object of my obsession was a muslin dress with a pink bow. An embroidered dress ran a close second.
Being brought up in a house where looking pretty was apparently an important duty of any daughter, I studied older girls for cues. The secret, even then, was not to overdo it. Unfussy but colourful. Patterned but not screaming for attention.
Looking back, almost all my favourite clothes have been colourful. They’ve also tended toward the formal. As a teenager, I only had to wear a long, red ball gown to feel twenty times more confident.
At work, alongside a wonderful Cerruti blue suit purchased at an Italian outlet, I was in love with a light pink waisted dress with a V-shaped black oversized collar. I would wear it to Channel Four meetings to give me confidence under intense interrogation by the Current Affairs Commissioning Editor.
In the 1990s, the pattern continued with different styling. Deep tropical green dresses and one of my favourite jackets of all – a chequered multi-coloured Lanvin. (Those were the days when, comparatively speaking, one could save and buy designer clothes without taking out a mortgage.)
As for my mother, who was far from a snazzy dresser, some of my most vivid memories now that she’s gone are when she dressed up. In my teens, she had a tropical-coloured long dress full of burnt orange and sunflower yellow swirls. Later, as she moved into middle age, a belted dress of near scarlet with blue paintbrush details.
The Rejection of Colour
In recent years, fashion has become a colour-free zone. Our streets mirror our national mood. Anger, depression and contempt for one another reign.
The metros of Paris, Milan, New York and London tell the story. Armies of women still clad in Adidas Sambas with baggy trousers, super-puff jackets during winter and crops with tracksuits in summer. The ‘don’t be pretentious’ vibe effaces all but the most beautiful. We’ve become drab versions of ourselves, hiding from the world. Even big-name dressers with eye-watering budgets dress down unless at a gala – and even then, they’ve become hesitant and apologetic.
I thought I was more or less in a minority of one until recently. But it seems the sense that something is wrong is growing. Justin FitzPatrick, The Shoe Snob, articulating precisely what’s been lost in our post-Covid style collapse:
“Sweatpants are for the gym, or home. Or maybe a quick store run. But not for daily use all day long. For me, the idea of being respectable has been lost. The idea of dressing nice is actually showing respect for others, for society, and in reality, for yourself. Being comfortable everywhere without caring about societal rules is selfish. This entire trend is a selfish one.”
FitzPatrick’s observation cuts to the heart of something deeper than mere aesthetics. This casualness in dress translates to casualness in public settings – whether in business, restaurants or education. Service has dropped correspondingly. Once, walking into Bergdorf’s or Harvey Nichols meant encountering staff who were both impeccably dressed and attentive. Now you’re fortunate if anyone acknowledges your presence.
This casualness in dress translates to casualness in public settings – whether in business, restaurants or education. Service has dropped correspondingly. Once, walking into Bergdorf’s or Harvey Nichols meant encountering staff who were both impeccably dressed and attentive. Now you’re fortunate if anyone acknowledges your presence. Colourful clothing reaches out to others. It signals willingness to engage. Our continuing attachment to athletic leisure wear reflects introversion and rejection of society. We avert our gaze and hurry past each other.
The Need for Change and Colour
Fashion should be uplifting, not an invitation toward depression. After the pandemic, I anticipated an era of celebration. Instead, fitness fashion force-fed us neurotic uniformity.
Several years on from Covid, we’re still wrapping ourselves in what I call the ‘uniform of emotional retreat’. The cry for inclusivity has killed off individuality and the inherent fun of dressing up.
Time then to break out. Despite the ongoing drumbeat that the world is dangerous and doomed, let’s lift our eyes and embrace the flamboyance of colour. Whatever our generation, we need to exit our depression.
Calling Time on Doom and Gloom
So, let’s abandon our uniform of gloom – the uniform that renders us more invisible than we need be. Why take Newton’s rainbow and reduce it down to grey?
Colour is a mood-enhancer. And that’s doubly important for anyone over 40. We are not teenagers who can roll out of bed in whatever the fashion mafia suggests. The tousled, not-quite-sure-whether-I’m-alive look is a fast road to oblivion.
We are not in Mao’s China, despite all evidence to the contrary on our streets. Let’s decide that colour is an expression of ourselves, ushering in a tomorrow painted in every hue except grey.
Grey and black are oh so funereal, a negation of life. Aesthetically, they efface the average woman, especially as we travel up the decades.
My Personal Manifesto.
What turns my head now? A bright pop of colour. A magical vintage piece. A statement scarf that says ‘yes’ to life. Boots, shoes, a belt. A whole ensemble. Monotony is the enemy.
If we start dressing like we’re alive – chromatically alive – perhaps we can change the mood music that has accompanied this decade. Generation Z needs permission to stop dressing like they’re already dead. Anger and resentment are killing their and our ability to change the script.
And this is one area where we have prior knowledge. We remember when fashion was joyful. Colour as afterthought? No, colour as birthright. Colour as rebellion; as the only sane response to an insane world.
The Science of Colour as Therapy
To understand why this colour revolution matters, particularly for those of us past fifty, I’ve been diving into the work of those who have studied either the chemistry or significance of colour.
Aristotle believed all colours descended from a battle between light and darkness: a cosmic struggle played out on every surface. For him, colour was fundamentally about tension, and colour of any kind was on the side of light.
But it’s Goethe, in his Theory of Colours, who declared that colour was a matter of emotion as well as of physics. Echoing today’s colour therapists, he believed different colours carried different meanings. Yellow, he wrote, has a serene, gay, softly exciting character. Blue offers a contradictory feeling of excitement and calm. Red-yellow – the warm oranges – give impressions of warmth and joy.
Goethe understood what we’ve forgotten: wearing colour is a moral choice. In his view, people who fear bright colours reveal an anxious spirit. Those who love them possess energy and vitality. He would have diagnosed our current monochrome epidemic as a society-wide spiritual crisis.
His prescience in this regard is extraordinary. He was mapping emotional territory that Dr. Adam Alter would later prove with neuroscience: specifically, that colour perception directly affects our cortisol levels and dopamine production. When we wear colour, our peripheral vision creates a feedback loop. Wearing yellow or orange, for instance, measurably increases the wearer’s optimism and energy levels.
Colour Lift Off
Science tells us colour isn’t just aesthetic or decorative – it’s partly pharmaceutical. In The Interaction of Colour, Josef Albers took this understanding further. To dress in colour is to embrace complexity, to reject binary thinking, to insist on nuance in an age of oversimplification.
Kassia St. Clair echoes this analysis. She poses the question: why have we become so afraid of colour right now? Her answer is unsettling: our retreat into black and grey signals profound unease with the world we inhabit. When we dress in black, we’re not just being chic; we’re referencing Spanish court mourning and Protestant severity.
These thinkers understood that fashion operates at the intersection of psychology, culture, and power. When you put on colour, you’re not just choosing an outfit – you’re choosing a relationship with the world.
The Designer Revolution
The greatest fashion designers have always understood this power. When Elsa Schiaparelli invented shocking pink in 1937, she wasn’t playing with pretty shades – she was weaponizing colour against Chanel’s beige minimalism.
Christian Dior’s post-war New Look deliberately rejected wartime austerity with extravagant fabrics in luscious colours. He knew that after trauma, the appropriate response isn’t greyer but more colour.
Emilio Pucci was similarly determined to change the script of post-war society. After war, grief, devastation, he insisted the response wasn’t greyer but an injection of beauty and colour. His psychedelic swirls of electric blue, fiery orange, and sun-drenched fuchsia were rebellion printed on silk.
Now his daughter Laudomia curates the brand alongside designer Camille Miceli, who has revived the battle cry for a new generation. The data tells the story: searches for Pucci increased ninety-six percent in summer 2024. As Katy Lubin at Lyst observed, after years of serious, minimal, intellectual fashion, something colourful and fresh feels revolutionary.
The current runways are finally catching up. Valentino’s Pierpaolo Piccioli sent forth an army in fuchsia. Jonathan Anderson at Loewe is painting with a palette that would excite Matisse. Even the minimalists are cracking – Phoebe Philo’s return includes unexpected shots of vermillion and chartreuse.
The Colour Manifesto
This isn’t just about pretty frocks. It’s about reclaiming our place in the world. Every colourful garment we choose is a small act of resistance against the forces that are trying to crush us.
