Time was, a person could choose all sorts of neutrals to base their wardrobe on – more than one, even! Navy blue, black, brown, beige, cream, grey (charcoal or otherwise), even white.
These days, it’s black.
This is all very well if you’re Miss Silver – or if black happens to suit you – but a right pain otherwise. Just you try finding a decent range of shoes in navy blue. Or socks in brown (sore point). Or a nice grey handbag.
No, these days black is not only the new black, it’s the new everything else as well. But why? Are we in mourning for the death of variety? What’s your theory?
I have often seen various neutral colours available in clothing shops, albeit everything is the same neutral colour and which colour everything is changes with the fashion season (I assume. It could be the phases of the moons of Jupiter for all I know.)
And, of course, the clothes are expensive and only available in certain styles.
It’s a pain, isn’t it? Amy Twigger Holroyd suggests in the book Folk Fashion the idea of a fashion commons, which commercial fashion only permits us to walk on very limited areas of – and they decide which areas at which time. Freedom! say I.
My strategy is to continue to wear my clothes to rags until a colour or style arrives that suits me, and then spend up large. The fault in this scheme is that I’m so allergic to shopping that I tend to miss the critical moment when this happens, not being aware of what’s in the shops at any given time.
That is the issue, isn’t it? Fashions change so quickly these days – I hear there are shops that bring new lines in every fortnight – so how are you supposed to keep up with the play without frittering your time away popping in to keep an eye on things?