Burgundy Season Opens Early

It began, as these things do, in the shoes. A burgundy loafer appeared in the resort lookbooks last winter, moved to the pre-fall racks in June, and by the first week of August had colonized the sidewalk outside a coffee shop on a ninety-degree morning, worn with bare ankles by three separate women who did not know each other.

The shade in question is not the burgundy of a nineteen-nineties lipstick, which was browner and more forgiving. It is a cleaner, wetter red — nearer to oxblood, nearer still to the color of a good leather library chair. It photographs beautifully and it flatters almost nobody by accident, which is exactly why it works: it must be chosen, and a chosen color reads as intention.

The full palette around it is deep brown, an earthy green with grey in it, and cream. The silhouettes are structured — a proper shoulder, a trouser with a break, a trench that is not oversized for the first time in eight years. Layering is back, and specifically the nineties multi-layer top: a fine knit over a collared shirt, both tucked, sleeves pushed.

What is genuinely new, and what I did not expect, is the return of ornament. Enormous paillettes. A brooch the size of a hand, in the shape of a flower, worn on a coat in daylight. Leather gloves in September for no weather-related reason at all. After a decade of quiet luxury — of clothes that whispered their price to people who already knew it — there is a real appetite for something that can be seen from across a street.

My advice, offered every August and taken by nobody: buy the color in one item, not four. A burgundy loafer is a decision. A burgundy loafer, bag, coat and scarf is a costume, and in February it will be a costume you resent.

They were bought and worn for two weeks each. The $38 pair is glued, has a cardboard insole board, and separated at the welt on day nine. The $890 pair is Goodyear-welted, resoleable, and will outlive this magazine.

The interesting answer is neither of them. It is the $215 pair: leather-lined, cemented rather than welted, so it cannot be resoled — but it is comfortable from the first hour and will last four seasons of real wear.

Cost per wear at four seasons is about eighty cents. The $890 pair, at fifteen years, beats it. The $38 pair costs the most of all, because you buy it again in November.

The original had a moody palette, a blazer and an implied library. The current one has a blazer, a pleated skirt, a loafer, a shade of brown with a name, and 4.2 million videos.

Nowhere in the tag is a book. There is one candle that smells like a book.