The slightest change of color can push an outfit from being fully summer to fully autumn. In this case I am talking about the pants in the photo above. Look at the entire outfit. It is very standard. We have a navy blazer, light blue OCBD, green and white knit tie, brown belt. This is all very standard. If you wore standard khaki chinos, this could be any season. If you wore light stone chinos, it would be spring, summer, fall. If you wore nantucket red chinos, it would be decidedly summer. These chinos are a rust, burnt brown, reddish caramel. They are just a couple clicks away from nantucket red. Yet, this outfit is 0% summer and 100% autumnal.
Look at that. That is fascinating isn't it? It is just a slightly darker shade. It isn't a radically different color. It is just a few clicks over. Nothing else could change. You could keep everything else the exact same and it would be a total summer outfit with nantucket reds. This is a fantastic example of how much can change with the slightest color alteration. Sometimes, in our style, in our uniform, it can feel restrictive. It can feel as if we are too boxed in. We wonder how many other ways we can wear this or that. We may feel like we are just wearing the same outfit everyday. This feeling is exacerbated by the fact we live in a chaotic circus where people dress in the most psychotically unhinged ways. In comparison, even the staunch Ivy/Prep devotee can feel restricted from time to time.
If we fine tune our eye a bit, if we turn it a bit closer, a bit more detailed, if we think a bit more artistically, like an artist considers the ways the colors wash over one's eyes, we open up an entirely different territory. We unlock a different side of things. It is not so objective, it is more subjective. It is more in the air, it is more of a dance and a feeling. The space of color and interaction, how they play together and the feeling it gives the viewer. Once we get here and really let ourselves explore a bit, our outfits become more poetic, richer and give us a new look at life and even allows us to develop our own personal style in a deeper more self-understood way.