The winter colours I am wearing this year

Winter is when I wear colour, oddly. Summer is white and beige. Winter is where the deep shades live. These are the ones I am wearing now, and how they go together.

Burgundy, first

My favourite this year. We saw it creeping in last winter and now it is everywhere, and I understand why. It is dark enough to wear like a neutral and rich enough to be the point of the outfit. Head to toe works: burgundy knit, burgundy trousers, tone on tone. It looks expensive in a way that black in that quantity does not.

Dark florals, with deep green

A floral on a black or navy ground is a winter print, not a summer one that lost its way. I put it with deep green, the colour of pine, and the two make each other warmer. Green also sits well with brown and with black, so a green coat goes over most of what I own.

Every brown there is

Cream, beige, camel, chocolate. Brown is the winter neutral I would keep if I could only keep one, because it goes with everything else on this list and is kinder to a winter face than black. A brown coat, brown boots, a brown bag. Pick one and the outfit warms up.

The rest of the palette

Dark purple, for depth when burgundy feels too expected. White, which is sharpest against all these dark shades. Red, for December. Light pink, soft against grey and brown. Grey itself, which lets any of the others sit beside it. And black, which holds all of it together.

Putting them next to each other

The pairs I keep coming back to: dark green with brown, burgundy with a dark floral, grey with light pink, cream with chocolate. Two colours, one texture contrast, a knit against something smooth. That is the outfit.