March 6, 2023
Grey for warm weather is hard to find! Later on, I might be able to find gray linen without a lot of trouble, but right now we have to think of grey as something we will wear on cool spring days…
Cotton cardigan – L.L.Bean; silver droplet earrings – Marie June Jewelry; tee shirt – J.Crew; jeans – Slvrlake; silver bag – Betsy & Floss; knit pants – L.L.Bean; sneakers – ARA; silver loafers – Cole Haan
All I’m doing here is showing all 10 of the Pantone Colors for Autumn/Winter 2023, as chosen from the New York Fashion Week shows… (which means that there will be ANOTHER bunch of colors for London, and probably ANOTHER bunch for Autumn/Winter, without any fashion show connection!)
I’m eager to hear from you all about which of these color combinations you like, and which you don’t!
Dark red turtleneck – The Knotty Ones; earrings – Vintouch Italy; scarf – Elizabetta; bracelet – Tory Burch; shoes – SoftWalk; bag – Modern Picnic
Festival Pink cardigan – J.Crew; earrings – J.Crew; scarf – Luna & Avery; bracelet – Alexis Bittar; shoes – Cole Haan; bag – Johnny Loves Rosie
Vivid fuchsia cashmere sweater – J.Crew; earrings – Kris Nations; scarf – Mantility; bracelet – EDEN + ELIE; shoes – Sarto by Franco Sarto; clutch – OhSun
Deep wine cotton sweater – L.L.Bean; ruby earrings – Pearloir; scarf – Luna & Avery; bracelet – Fierce Lynx Designs; shoes – ARA; maroon suede bag – Sostter
Paprika cardigan – Alex Mill; earrings – Auree Jewellery; scarf – OnebyOne Design; bracelet – Fierce Lynx Designs; shoes – Journee Collection; bag – Sea & Grass
Sweater – Boden; earrings – And Other Stories; scarf – The Met Store; peridot bracelet – Amazon Collection; sneakers – Seavees; bag – Found Thread
Cardigan – Ralph Lauren; earrings – Tishavi; scarf – Ala von Auersperg; bracelet – Ross-Simons; sneakers – Jambu; tote – Stoney Clover Lane
Cardigan – L.L.Bean; earrings – INC International Concepts; scarf – Jessie Zhao New York; bracelets – Style&Co.; flats – Skechers; bag – Furla
Woodrose marl sweater – L.L.Bean; rose quartz earrings – Universal Thread; scarf – Pierre Louis Mascia; bracelet – Anna Zuckerman; shoes – Bernardo; bag – Reiss
Cardigan – Amazon Essentials; earrings – Genevive; scarf – The Met Store; resin bracelet – Arden Jewelry; sneakers – Propet; tote – Campo Marzio
I don’t hate any of these, although I admit that there are some that I like more than other!
Olive green might be the next neutral I show – any others that you would like to see?
love,
Janice
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Good morning. The burnt Sienna combination is definitely my favourite. And I think the high visibility one is my least favourite but that’s probably because of how I would look if I wore it.
Have a lovely week
Mark me down for the Burnt Sienna + grey combos. Red-orange isn’t a shade I’ve ever worn but it looks so appealing.
I also really like the Carnival Glass option. That colour is firmly in my wheelhouse so I’ve surprised myself by preferring the Sienna.
I don’t quite understand why there are so many “definitive” sets of Pantone colours each year. How many decades have they been doing this – does anyone know?
I don’t wear grey. But if I had a pair of grey jeans, I would be most likely to pair the burnt sienna sweater with them. The outfit with the Kohlrabi sweater is nice also. I would really like to see these colors paired with camel.
Burnt Sienna definitely. As a matter of fact, I managed to snag that sweater before it sold out and it is absolutely beautiful in color and feel. AND wonder of wonders I had planned on wearing it today with gray. I didn’t buy any of the other things, one of my Fable scarves has a little orange fox in the print that picks up the sweater color wonderfully. My least favorite is the magenta. I find that very jarring …
Love that yellow with the grey!
i wear have only gray and denim as a neutral. gray pants, t-shirts, skirts, blazer, cardigans, etc. i love that it is so flexible with any accent color. i wear warm pink, peacock blue, gold, silver, …
i started wearing only gray because yellow (not the High Vis) is my favorite accent, and always has been. but it looks weird with most other neutrals.
Yellow and grey is a classic menswear combo – always elegant!
hugs,
Janice
I wear a lot of gray. Several of these Pantone colors hurt my eyes. I am sure you can guess which.
I would do the light blue or a lavender if I owned gray pants.
I’ve been keeping my eyes ye out for some nice grey fabric to make a skirt. Once that happens I would love to play with some new-to-me colour combos.
Very timely! Light gray is my new favorite light neutral. It works well with my new-ish natural silver hair. Previously I would have liked Carnival Glass and Burgundy with gray but have discovered I need saturated and/or brights now. So for me favorites are Persian Jewel Blue, Magenta, Rose Violet and Sienna. Strangely a deep rust works. The yellow is my least favorite even though bright.
Janice, this is off the subject, but I would very much like to know what still lingers with you…..about your recent experiment with wearing the same dress over and over for so many days.
I am currently down to one factory flawed pair of pants that I love and four others that I can just tolerate.
I just got rid of the ones that make me cross every time I put them on….
I told myself that I woukd rather wear the ones I like and wash them every time I turned around than the ones that make me feel like a not nice person….
But there are no guarantees that I will find more that I like in the future, so there is definitely some anxiety going on here…
Any advice?
Get rid of two of the four, and put the other two in the back of your closet. You never have to wear them except in some sort of wardrobe emergency, but you don’t have to put yourself in a position of feeling anxious because you only have one pair of pants!
I learned a lot, but I think I’m actually gaining more perspective right now doing the “1 Tee Shirt, 31 Days” experiment that I started March 1. I feel like I’ve always had this worry that I needed to have spares – clean things – extra things – just in case the clothing that I’m wearing suddenly… bursts into flames? falls off of my body because every seam comes undone simultaneously? suddenly is covered with barbecue sauce and mustard?
At the end of March, I’m going to think it all through and try to put it into words to share with you all…
love,
Janice
I’m certainly hoping this was a once in a lifetime occurrence, but my washer broke and then I came down with Covid before I could replace it. I also had a friend who was recuperating from knee surgery staying with me – she got Covid first. And my back was behaving badly.
This certainly convinced me of the importance of having spares. My father was a hotel manager, and the housekeeping rule for sheets was one set on the bed, one on the shelf, and one in the wash.
True, I could have hand washed clothes, nightgowns, and underwear, but I wasn’t feeling much like it. So I was glad I had items “on the shelf.”
Could you take the pair of pants that you love to a tailor and have them make a pattern and then duplicate them?
I love grey and my parings would be High Visibility or Persian Jewel. You’ve given me some focus for spring shopping!
I love the burnt sienna with the gray (I remember that color from my big box of 64 crayons!) although I’d personally look better in the red orange or the kohlrabi combos. BTW I own those Whitby oxfords; they’re a fun and comfortable upgrade from sneakers!
Looks like we were both thinking of the same box.
Grey is one of the ultimate neutrals! I love the lighter warm greys with yellow (except mine is like lemonade or bright lemons!) The grey and peach is lovely. And the Persian Jewel (kind of hyacinth?) is so pretty.
I’d definitely wear grey with flamingo pink, coral, aqua, terra cotta, cream, peach, warm, bright green.
I rediscovered warm, clear brown…very difficult to find but it’s a true workhorse neutral as is any of the tans (just be sure you get warm brown if you’re warm toned and cool brown if you’re cool toned because the difference can be striking!)
Burnt Sienna for the win! The wine/burgundy color is classic and beautiful with gray, but I can’t wear it.
Not my color at all, but the Burnt Sienna is lovely with the grey–and I would never have thought of that combination! I also like both greens; but even though I prefer cool colors, I really don’t care for the in-your-face brights this year…
The first one just sings! Although, I’d probably only wear the two pinks.
These are all lovely, even the colours I would/could never wear, like High Visibility! I started adding more grey to my wardrobe about 10 years ago, long before I found out that cooler tones favoured me better; my late mother loved and wore a lot of camel, tan, beige and always pushed them as versatile neutrals, but I always looked terrible. And since finding out, I feel vindicated and thankful that grey is much easier to find nowadays. I love the Burnt Sienna and Red Dahlia with grey, especially for autumn, though would probably go with something cooler than BS and lighter than the RD — just a basic wine colour.
As a cool/clear-toned person, I really love Persian Jewel, as well as Rose Violet and Red Dahlia, and I am going to experiment with some Viva Magenta type tones to see if I can pull them out.
Peach and light green are too pale for me unfortunately, even though I love them in concept, and I can’t wear warm colors like oranges and yellows at all. My redhaired daughter loves yellow and looks surprisingly good in it!
Kaki as a neutral? Is that possible?
These colours are making me think of my schooldays giant box of crayons, especially Burnt Sienna. Rose Violet is very pretty, especially with the grey.
High visibility rocks! I commute by bike and have to wear a yellow (or hot pink) reflective jacket all the time, just to keep me safe in traffic. If I can incorporate this in my everyday style (soft summer type here, but open for a challenge), than it’s the best option!
I like Grey and have a grey linen summer skirt from Eileen Fisher. I like it best with crisp optic white. My favorites among the Pantone colors is the peach. I have not seen peach available for years. I also like red-orange (my best red), and burnt sienna and carnival glass.
I’m really in the minority here today. The Burnt Sienna and Grey was my least favorite, although I can’t for the life of me figure out why. 🤔 It should have worked, similar value, similar saturation, but I took one look and it was just “Nope, I’ll pass.” I liked the rest well enough, and I really liked the Persian Jewel, the Carnival Glass, and the High Visibility.
Come the Equinox and I’ll be switching out my winter black pieces for my spring charcoal pieces. My accent colours will stay the same.
The brights all scream at the grey for me but the muted colours look lovely. I started with falling in love with the burnt sienna and then promptly fell in love with each of the others as they came up culminating in the amazing carnival glass and tender peach. Wow.
I see someone suggested khaki as a neutral. Yes! Also, or instead, taupe? I know it’s hard to find, but it’s a lovely neutral.
Thank you for this series
This post makes my heart happy. Warm grey is one of my neutrals, and this post has great ideas. I’m planning a trip to England this summer and planning to pack grey, peach, and carnival glass, so wonderful timing! It will be nice to find those colors in the stores, too.
This is a year I will be focusing on replacing and updating my neutrals as I can’t see myself wearing any of these 10 Pantone colors (though many of them are quite lovely). Shopping may be more boring, but my wardrobe will benefit from purchasing the basics. And hopefully, next season the shops will be carrying colors in my range of accents. Exercising patience now will allow me to stock up on quality pieces later.
Hi there, I’m reading sections of your blog repeatedly so that I know exactly what I’m doing when I start (I’m away next week so starting as soon as I come back). In the meantime I have a dilemma. I have a lot of black and camel clothing, which I absolutely love, but there is no way I’d wear black in the summer (For context, I’m in the UK). I have also loved navy blue all my life, and am willing to wear it all year round, but I don’t find it as sharp of the black. I work in an office and everything I buy/wear has to be suitable for work. Please can you advise how you would deal with all the black, because I really love all of it, but can’t run 2 capsule wardrobes alongside one another, can I?
I think the first thing you need to do is figure out why you won’t wear black in the summer! I wear black, of course, but a lot of my black for warm weather is worn with a light accent – lots of white, occasionally purple, sometimes pink…
And of course you can have 2 capsule wardrobes! You can have FIVE, if you want to, and it makes things easier for you!
Do they really not wear black in the summer in the UK? I’ve never noticed that; I know that I wore black in Dublin and it wasn’t a big deal.
Tell us about your feelings about black, and we may have other ideas!
love,
Janice
@Jane Orson, if this helps I have 4 seasonal mini capsules in my 56 item closet. I wear black and grey pants in fall and winter while spring is navy and grey and summer is black and navy.
I own 4 black, 2 navy and 2 grey pants year round but I like to change the neutral core and the accents each quarter. I used to wear white jeans every summer but I didn’t reach for them anymore so I donated them.
Each quarter I pick out a small coordinated core of 4 pants, 2-3 cardigan/jacket layers and 10-12 tops, pullovers or blouses. I used to wear tailored jackets but I now enjoy cardigans in the same coordinated neutrals.
My spring capsule has a lightweight open front summer grey cardigan and a classic navy cashmere button up cardigan. 2 navy & 2 dark grey pants. Navy trench coat, 2 pair black shoes and black purse. I mix navy & black.
For life, colour and print I chose 6 key scarves. I picked 4 tops in whites, 2 pullovers are in grey, 1 celadon green pullover, T-shirt tops in mint, 1 soft warm pink & navy/white print.
I wear a lot of white tops from off white and winter white to bright white. Each quarter I choose 3-4 accent colours in my tops. I have a collection of 26 scarves that I rely on for colour and print. They keep my wardrobe from looking too much the same. I like to choose from my larger collection of earrings and some necklaces for further interest.
I think switching my seasonal capsules keeps me enjoying my whole wardrobe as it feels fresh each quarter. I look forward to using my old favourites that have been retired for a few months.
I have a separate year round mini capsule kept strictly for formal and evening wear. Based on black and navy.
Favourites are the soft green Carnival glass, the soft Persian blue and the Soft Peach with the grey. Some of the deeper muted tones are okay but I don’t like the bright ones with grey.
I wear something I call cranberry which is in between Red Dahlia and the Sienna shade but always with black because that shade looks right with navy or black. Sort of crisp and defined. Not as nice with grey.
Grey seems to call for the cloudy shades with a muted softer feel.
The harsh brights like the magenta pink and the bright yellow really fight with the soft grey. They’d look terrific against white or navy or even black.