I enjoy injecting some brighter colors in my weekend and casual wear, but as others have mentioned, moderation is the key.  One of my favorite pair of trousers is a lemon yellow chino which I will usually pair with a white or blue OCBD and maybe a navy blazer depending upon the occasion.  I would not pair the trousers with a pink shirt and madras blazer.  That would scream notice me a bit too loudly for me.

Colour is like poetry. Everyone's appreciation of the colour palette is different, just as different colours match each person's complexion differently.

Medium gray, for example, looks bleeding awful on me. For that reason I don't often wear tee-shirts, sweatshirts and sweaters in grey. I own a couple of grey suits, but they just look wrong and hang in the wardrobe for much of the time. Any 'blue' or any 'brown' and any combination thereof is a different matter. Charcoal's OK for me too.

I own some boss pink shetlands: blueish pinks, brownish pinks and so on, along with pink marl sweatshirts, and think that a 'buttermilk' silk-knit tie looks great with the BB blue/white uni-stripe shirt and navy blazer.

I'm not averse to the odd splash of colour but in the final analysis these decisions are personal to each of us and shouldn't be a creed or an edict dictated by any clothing philosophy.

'Colour is like poetry'.  I rather like that suggestion.  I have to admit, my interest in this subject goes back the best part of 35 years, to when I still took a mild interest in Bryan Ferry (big Roxy and Bowie fan at 13, you understand), and it was noted in a magazine interview that he preferred a muted Sickert to a flashy Chagall.  Stylistically, of course, Ferry has been hit or miss from the beginning, and yet small aspects had a certain resonance; for me at least.  Oh, I also liked the fact that he admired Parker and The MJQ.  I didn't know much about Ivy style at 18, but what I read about Montgomery Clift, and what I took in of his style, had a greater impact than Brando in a leather jacket or James Dean in just about anything.  Clift's 'Brooks' look appeared square but somehow cool, even to my untrained eye; and so facets of this or that begin to come together in all kinds of strange and unpredictable ways.

Just back from a week in Cornwall - the UK Cape Cod, and almost as difficult to get to. There is one colour in particular which is the absolute essence of Ivy : navy blue. It's just always so easy, so right, so practical, and when done well, with the right material (mainly corduroy I'd say) it can just look magnificent. I'm talking about a navy poplin Haspel sack from back in the day, a tattersall BD, an olive knitted tie and cordovan Weejuns. Or throw off your socks and swap the shirt for a navy sea island cotton Smedley. Yeh - navy with navy, very Mod Ivy, very Graham Marsh. The so-called Ivy colour scheme is of course the chosen colour palette for all 'traditional bourgeois Western dress' ('Gentleman's' clothing for want of a better term). This is an international phenomenon which I have seen carried out most effectively by, above all, my beloved Italians (the huge majority of window displays in Italian men's shops uses the traditional palette, still to this day, how marvellous is that?), but also I would argue by that very small percentage of British men who dress carefully and thoughfully in traditional clothing - visit the art and antique dealers of St.James and witness the impeccable standard of dress. As much as I love NYC it is certainly not for what it offers sartorially. Historically yes of course America is the very source of the Ivy look but they have long lost any sense of it as their style, their look. Those days are long over, and the nail in the coffin had to be the day Bass closed their Wilton factory. That was the day Ivy died in the USA. On many trips to the States I have never seen a well-dressed American - period. I have met many sussed ones who come to J.Simons to find what they want in London, but never in NYC have I spotted a guy doing the look with any panache. I feel like the flame is kept alive by nutters like us here, but on a much more significant scale by the Japanese owners of J.Press, companies like Uniqlo, and the impeccable taste and dedication to tradition and quality exhibited by the Italians, the Japanese and by smaller communities in France, the UK, Spain, and, yes, the USA.

GG

Just a wee bump, as the complexions lighten, the leaves redden and the skies leaden...

Took me a while to find the right trousers colour for a 'natural' shaded sports jacket, which got me thinking about this thread again. The colour is steel-grey, the colour of industrial overalls.

We'll be back to grey and navy soon enough.