Autumn colour advice tends to cluster around the same few combinations: camel and burgundy, navy and rust, olive and cream. Those combinations work, which is why they keep appearing. But they're also the combinations everyone else is wearing. This post covers some of the less obvious pairings that are worth trying this season, plus the logic behind why they work.
Layering is one of those things that sounds simple until you're standing in front of your wardrobe at 7am in October, wearing three things that don't work together and wondering where it went wrong. The problem is usually not the individual pieces. It's the order, the weight, and the proportion. This guide covers all three, with specific combinations for the kind of autumn that Kyoto actually has. Which is warmer than most layering guides assume.
The fashion calendar says autumn starts in September. Your wardrobe probably disagrees. Before you buy anything new this season, it's worth spending two or three hours with what you already own. Most wardrobes contain at least one complete autumn outfit that hasn't been worn in two years because it's buried under things that don't work.
Knitwear is where autumn dressing gets interesting and also where it gets complicated. The range of fabrics, weights, and constructions is wide enough that two pieces both labelled 'wool knit' can behave completely differently in an outfit. This guide covers the main fabric types, what they're good for, and how to care for them so they last more than one season.
Office dressing in Japan has its own set of constraints. The commute is often long and involves a lot of walking. The office is usually air-conditioned to a temperature that has nothing to do with the weather outside. The afternoon meeting might be in a different building. These are the conditions the outfit needs to work in, and most general office-dressing advice ignores all of them.
Proportion is the word that comes up most often when people try to describe what makes Japanese street style distinctive. It's not the individual pieces. Many of them are ordinary. It's the relationship between them. Wide and narrow. Long and short. Heavy and light. The combinations are deliberate, and they follow a logic that's learnable.
A coat is the most expensive and most visible piece in an autumn wardrobe. It's also the piece most likely to be bought in a rush, in a shop that's too warm, while wearing the wrong shoes. This guide covers the questions worth asking before you buy, and the checks worth doing before you leave the shop.
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