Last December, when Pantone declared “mocha mousse” the colour of 2025, it seemed ripe for mockery. Poop memes abounded. But it turns out the colour gurus actually had the last laugh because they were right.
InStyle then made the early call of naming chocolate brown an it-colour. Vogue included it as one of the six main colour trends for the season.
And everywhere you looked at the recent European Spring/Summer 2026 fashion shows – in the audience and on the street in Paris and Milan, people were wearing shades of brown in leather, suede and cashmere.
And not beige or camel but warm, plush shades of brown like chestnut, bourbon and topaz.
Chloe Malle, the new head of editorial content for US Vogue, wore a woody brown wide-wale Dries Van Noten pantsuit to the Loewe show, and Karla Martínez, Vogue's head of content for the Mexico and Latin America editions, had on a loamy knit jacket, top and skirt.
Linda Fargo, the fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman, admitted that the last thing she did before she left for Europe was buy a pair of mock croc kitten heel sling-backs.
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She also packed some espresso brown mules as her "can’t-get-through-fashion-season-without”, she said, and a brown Monse pantsuit.
“I think it has to do with a need to feel grounded,” Fargo said, noting that Bergdorf has gone deep on the colour.
“It’s connected to the earth and nature.”
Chloe King, the director of fashion and lifestyle for Saks Global, who was wearing a brown Dries Van Noten chiffon dress speckled with purple polka dots when I ran into her at the Gabriela Hearst show, said that the thing about brown is that it goes with almost everything.
“I always associated brown with Milan, where it is always worn with navy, and it looks so chic,” Ines De La Fressange, the designer-muse who was once the face of France, said at the Roger Vivier presentation.
“Now, that has spread everywhere.” She pointed at a new version of the Vivier classic Belle Du Jour buckle pump in graphic brown and black.
“Very cool, no?” she said.
Indeed, for those who think of brown as indelibly connected to the 1970s – the last time it was this dominant a colour in clothing – the way to shift your perspective may start with accessories.
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There was a reason Yumi Shin, the chief merchandising officer of Bergdorf, decided “she had to have the new Prada slim brown belt for the season”, Fargo said.
Other ways to ease yourself into a brown frame of mind could be shoes or a sweater. It’s essentially another basic, like black, but a little softer.
Which is why, when asked whether this was but a turn of the trend cycle, Fargo laughed and said when she did her last set of predictions for the store, she named brown as a key element going into 2026.
In other words, this brownout is not ending anytime soon. – Vanessa Friedman/©2025 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
