We’ve all had that dream—the one where you show up to work and everyone laughs at you. You look down and realize, to your horror, that you’re wearing only underwear. The thought of coworkers open-mouthed laughing is enough to jar anyone awake. This week, that nightmare was my reality. Well, if you swap the underwear for a series of brightly hued outfits well outside my personal comfort zone, but keep the part where my colleagues were laughing.
Those who know me in real life, and those who have read my ode to the summer goth, know that my wardrobe is almost entirely black with the occasional touches of navy, charcoal, chocolate brown, and white—I almost never stray. The lone exception in my closet is a striped Sacai button-down pinstripe shirt made from blue, green, and pink tops haphazardly stitched together. The one day I wore it to the office, my deskmate asked me if I was okay.
Still, the funky full-body color combinations of the men’s spring 2027 runways have been rattling around in my head. Maybe they’re scratching the deeply buried, Connecticut-prep school itch. (The Lilly Pulitzer dresses and Jack Rogers sandals still sitting in my childhood closet haunt me to this day.) Inspired, I set out to challenge myself—though a self-imposed borderline personal humiliation ritual might be a better way to describe it—by dressing in the bright colors of the recent runways.
Usually when I get dressed in the mornings, I approach my wardrobe through silhouette. With little to no color variation, once I’ve decided on a shape I like, the process is basically done. Adding an extra step by layering color into the formula felt daunting, so I decided to let the experts take the lead and took my cues from the men’s shows.
The rules were simple: I had to wear at least two colors, and no black (not counting footwear). To star, I scanned Vogue Runway for looks I wanted to emulate and found myself naturally drawn to Celine, Ralph Lauren, Comme des Garçons, Willy Chavarria, and Auralee. But with only black and neutrals at my disposal, I knew I was going to need to call a few things in from some friends at Net-a-Porter, Gap, and Cos.
I eased into it on Monday, lifting the tomato red, plum, and brown combo from Michael Rider’s Celine menswear debut with a wine-red skirt from Gap, the pleating on the waistband mimicking the runway’s cummerbund, and a contrast collar Cos sweater; I felt alert and put together. “Those are goth shades. I want you in lime green,” a colleague texted in response to a mirror selfie before I left my apartment. Noted.
