Style: wear brown in town

Part of knowing the rules of how to dress is knowing how to break those rules. Everyone knows that one must not wear brown in town – as a colour, it is more suited to the countryside. Yet does it just apply to shoes or does it extend to jackets and suits as well? More to the point, why does it exist as a rule at all?

As with most sartorial rules, it has more to do with tradition than with any tangible reasoning. According to these traditional rules of dress, black was the most formal colour, as seen in banker’s jackets (which were usually worn with grey striped trousers), morning coats, black tie and funeral attire. The greys and blues of the City were marginally less formal, and brown was reserved for leisure-wear (a brown trilby was, and in many circles still is, de rigeur for the horsetrack), strictly worn at weekends and on holiday and not as business attire.

There is little doubt that brown as a colour is still more informal than grey or blue, and there are still many professions where one could not get away wearing a brown suit to work. Nor is it recommended (on this blog at any rate) – city dress is traditional by necessity, essential to treat the business conducted with the right amount of formality and respect. Brown suggests a more relaxed attitude that is not appropriate in the boardroom, but is certainly so in the park, at the club and generally while enjoying leisure time in the city. As the picture demonstrates, it gives one the opportunity to explore the brighter side of one’s wardrobe, accessing those green, purple and orange tones of shirts and ties that one cannot always get away with in more formal situations.

So wear brown, both in and out of town.