I’m afraid to wear bright colours

Spruce up your wardrobe this year with a deliberate act of cheerfulness

I’ve found myself online clothes shopping a lot this past year, though I rarely take my cart all the way to checkout. Funny thing is, I keep gravitating to bright colours, which I have never worn. I’ve remained faithful to shades of black my whole adult life. Is my subconscious trying to tell me something? — Katrine, Toronto

Dear Katrine: Your question is like that kapow moment in “The Wizard of Oz” when bleak, grey, tornado-flattened Kansas explodes into Technicolor and lollipops.

Of course, we are yearning to unleash a whole fresh box of pencil crayons right now! Colour has intrinsic power and can have a powerful effect on our moods: we humans deploy colour in our art, our wardrobes and our decor, all to mimic the natural high we get from the brilliant colours of nature.

There is a yellow dress haunting my dreams right now and I think she is trying to remind me of better days. I own a sunshine yellow vintage 1970s Halston “goddess” dress, a satisfying swirl of fabric that is fastened onto one shoulder, much like a Grecian gown. I bought it in a fit on eBay a dozen years ago and have such golden memories of wearing it. (In my dreams, I’m gliding in it, as if on a hidden hoverboard.) I wore it for a season or two when I was open to the kinds of attention and compliments a bright yellow dress brings.

That dress stands out in my wardrobe today. Like you, it sounds, I was seduced by a vision of what was in my mind a very New York kind of cool and sophisticated all-black clothing identity. I have mostly stuck with that version of myself since circa 1995, buying new black slim-cut trousers and oversized black blazers on repeat. It’s easy, it’s bulletproof, it’s slimming, but a tad boring, too, especially right now.

Enter the wardrobe doctor. I rang up

Nicholas Mellamphy to tackle your question, as he is a man unafraid of bold statements.

He currently presides over Cabine by Nicholas Mellamphy, a Yorkville by-appointment bespoke shopping experience. He was previously creative director of the Room at the Bay, a man Vogue called “a fashion legend,” and the New York Times lauded for “daring points of view.”

All that fancy intro aside, though, Mellamphy is wildly generous with his advice for those of us who do not have front-row couture perches.

“Women who layer up in black are signalling they are artistic, creative, cool,” says Mellamphy. “Look I get it, the older I get the more drawn I am to uniform dressing.” But consider, he says, the role of all-black clothing in keeping status quo: “It has to do with women being brought up to not take centre stage, especially in the workforce, to fit in, to skim under the radar.”

There is an emerging academic field called fashion psychology; it is newish (about a decade old) and hip, and its practitioners use social media to spread the word about their studies and ideas. Take Dawnn Karen, a prof at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Throughout the pandemic, Karen has been injecting her feed with colour theory and it has stuck with me.

According to Karen’s site, @FashionPsychologyInstitute, emotion underlying colour can be decoded. Take from this research what you choose. Red, says FPI, “can be worn if one seeks fame/ popularity and the possession of power.” Yellow, it says, “can be worn to project external optimism” and “strategically to stand out in a crowd.” As for black, the opposite is pretty much true: black is to “conceal emotions,” to “invoke self-discipline and self-control,” and while it can “project elegance and sophistication,” it should also not be worn “if the wearer wants to appear friendly.” Well, if that isn’t an ouch!

Mellamphy says his imagination soars when a client is open to colour. “They say — and I don’t know who they are — that if you wear red to an event, people will gravitate to you, want to talk to you. Colour does bring a sense of hope and encouragement and happiness.”

We need that now, more than ever. “Historically, fashion has always turned to colour as we come out of hard times,” Mellamphy says.

“Look at the British! They live in a black and white rainy world, but they are so comfortable with print and colour. I can’t think of any other explanation than that it is a deliberate act of cheerfulness.”

Think of the Queen and how she uses colour both to inspire, to reassure and to stand out in a crowd.

It is indeed time to unbox our pencil crayons. A great fashion stylist I used to work with on photo sets taught me to keep a collapsible clothing rack under my bed. I pull it out when I’m looking to edit down my clothes, or swap seasons, or prep for a vacation (sigh), or figure out what to wear for a special occasion (double sigh).

I also use it to integrate new ideas. Racks — go to a retail supplier, one of those places with mannequins in the window in what’s left of the fashion district — are a cheap investment in clarity around one’s wardrobe, especially as our identities are tornado-tossed these days. You can do this exercise in adding colour by hanging new clothes beside old in the shower, or a door frame, or arranged on your bed or sofa.

Imagining how a new item fits in is easier when you can see the pieces together. I’m going to leave my rack out for the next day or two, with that classic yellow dress hanging centre stage, to take it out of my past, and my dreams, and manifest some of its power into my present day. I humbly suggest you do the same.