Bored of beige? Here's why it's time to bring colour back into your wardrobe
FashionFashion6 November 2026
AuthorScarlett Ratcliffe
PhotosVogue Runway
Could getting dressed in colour be the easiest way to change your mood?
O
n days when the sun refuses to shine and the rain never seems to stop, getting dressed can become a form of escapism. For me, it is sometimes about blending into the weather, reaching for a grey jumper and a black scarf that reflect the dullness outside. But on other days, I want yellow. Whether through a bright accessory or a statement piece of clothing, I choose colour as a way of shifting my mood. Suddenly, getting dressed becomes about more than practicality; it becomes a reflection of how I feel and how I want to present myself to the world.
Colour has always carried emotional associations. We connect red with passion and love, green with nature and hope, blue with calm, and yellow with happiness and optimism. Although these meanings can vary across cultures and individuals, colour has an undeniable ability to evoke feelings and communicate ideas. This is what makes dressing in colour more than a passing fashion trend. It offers a way to express ourselves without speaking, allowing our clothing to communicate something about our identity before we have even introduced ourselves.
In this sense, colour becomes a language of its own. It can signal our mood, challenge expectations, or reflect the communities and cultures we come from. Unlike spoken language, however, it does not always have a single, fixed meaning. A bright red coat might represent confidence to one person and romance to another, while a familiar shade might remind someone else of childhood or home. This subjectivity is what makes colour so personal: we may share certain associations, but the way we wear and interpret colour remains uniquely our own.
After years in which minimalist wardrobes, neutral palettes and understated dressing have dominated much of the fashion conversation, it feels refreshing to see individuality expressed more visibly through clothing. Scrolling through social media, we encounter bold jackets, colourful handbags and unexpected combinations that feel less concerned with fitting in and more interested in standing out. While minimalism can be just as expressive, the renewed visibility of colour reminds us that clothing does not have to follow a particular aesthetic to be meaningful. Sometimes, a single bright accessory can communicate a sense of playfulness, rebellion, or optimism that an entire outfit cannot.
This relationship between colour and identity is not new. To understand how clothing can become a statement of individuality, we can look back to the 1980s, when fashion frequently challenged convention through exaggerated silhouettes, unconventional styling, and unapologetic self-expression. Designers began to use clothing not simply to flatter the body or follow established ideas of elegance, but to question them. Fashion became a performance of identity, and what people wore could communicate an attitude as much as a personal style.
One designer who embodied this spirit was Vivienne Westwood, whose work brought historical references into conversation with contemporary youth culture. Her Spring/Summer 1985 Mini-Crini collection offers a particularly striking example. Westwood reimagined the Victorian crinoline, a cage-like structure traditionally worn beneath women's skirts to create an exaggerated bell-shaped silhouette, by combining its distinctive shape with the modern mini skirt. The result was a garment that drew on the past while deliberately disrupting conventional ideas of proportion, femininity and dress.
The historical reference is important because the Victorian crinoline was far more than a decorative detail. It belonged to a period when women's clothing was shaped by strict social expectations and elaborate ideals of femininity. By bringing this silhouette into the context of 1980s fashion, Westwood transformed a symbol of historical dress into something provocative and contemporary. Her Mini-Crini was not simply a nostalgic revival; it demonstrated how designers could take familiar forms and give them new meaning. The dramatic shape challenged expectations of what a skirt should look like, making the body and the garment part of a visual statement.
This is where Westwood's work connects to the wider argument about fashion as self-expression. Just as colour can communicate emotion without words, silhouette can communicate an attitude towards tradition, identity and society. The Mini-Crini shows that clothing can carry history while simultaneously questioning it. By reworking a garment associated with the past, Westwood created something that felt rebellious and distinctly of its time. Her design reminds us that fashion is never entirely separate from the world around it: what we wear can reflect cultural change, challenge established views and offer new ways of understanding ourselves.
Today, designers continue to revisit fashion archives, reviving historical silhouettes and reinterpreting them through the lens of contemporary culture. These revivals allow the past to remain present, but they also show how meaning changes over time. A garment once associated with a particular social class, gender expectation or historical moment can be transformed into something that speaks to a new generation. In the same way, the colours we choose are shaped by the world we live in, carrying personal memories and cultural associations that evolve alongside us.
Perhaps this is why colour feels so powerful. Its significance extends beyond trends or the latest aesthetic circulating online; it lies in its ability to connect what we wear with what we feel and remember. An electric-blue scarf may not change the news, but it might change how we feel as we move through the world. A particular shade of yellow might remind us of summer holidays, childhood bedrooms or a favourite film. Sometimes, colour even reconnects us with a version of ourselves we thought we had forgotten.
The return of brighter colours to our streets and social media feeds, then, is about more than making a visual statement. It reminds us that clothing can be a way of exploring identity rather than simply presenting a finished version of ourselves. We can use it to experiment, to revisit memories, to challenge expectations or simply to make an ordinary day feel different. Fashion does not need to solve the world's problems to hold meaning; sometimes its value lies in the small, personal choices that make us feel more connected to ourselves.
So, the next time you’re stuck between your beige basic and your optimistic orange jumper, just ask yourself what version of myself do I want to be today?
