The Most Underrated Colour In Menswear

In our latest video, we make the case for the colour most men overlook, and show exactly how to wear it with confidence.

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The Case for Brown: Tailoring's Most Underrated Colour

There is a quiet confidence to the man who wears brown well. While the rest of the room gravitates toward navy and charcoal, he has made a deliberate choice, one that signals not corporate necessity, but a genuine understanding of cloth, colour, and personal style. Brown, in tailoring, is one of those colours that rewards the initiated. So why does it so rarely get its due?

Why We Default to Blue and Grey

It's entirely reasonable to build a wardrobe around navy and grey. They are genuinely versatile, they read as appropriately formal across a wide range of professional environments, and they are accessible; you'll find them in good quality at almost every price point. If you're building a suited wardrobe from scratch, particularly in a conservative field like law or finance, blues and greys are your foundations, and rightly so. But outside of that world, or once those foundations are in place, the case for brown becomes compelling.

What Makes Brown Special

Brown behaves differently to navy or grey on cloth. It is rarely flat. Like a well-made grey flannel, it has a natural mélange quality, light and dark fibres working together to give the colour depth and movement. A flat brown can look dull; a textured brown is endlessly interesting. This is why brown works so beautifully in seasonal fabrics. In winter cloths, flannels, tweeds, heavier worsteds, brown comes alive. Brown chalk stripe, brown houndstooth, brown Prince of Wales check: these are patterns with a long and distinguished history, and they carry a sophistication that is genuinely difficult to replicate in the same weaves rendered in blue or grey.

The trade-off is that brown does not translate well to entry-level tailoring in the way that navy does. If you want a genuinely good brown flannel suit, you are almost certainly looking at bespoke or made-to-measure. The high street rarely does it justice, which is partly why it remains underexposed, and partly why, when you do wear it well, it speaks so clearly of someone who has gone looking for something better.

Starting With a Sports Jacket

If you're not yet ready to commit to a full brown suit, a brown sports jacket is an excellent first step, and in many ways a more useful garment. Think of it as a change of pace from your navy blazer, with considerably more personality.

A mid-brown or beige sports jacket works with virtually the same shirts and ties that you'd reach for with blue or grey. A blue Bengal stripe shirt and a dark navy knitted tie, for example, look immediately sophisticated against a beige ground. And a chambray shirt is one of the most natural pairings imaginable with a chestnut jacket. The transition is easier than most people expect.

For trousers, mid-grey flannel remains the universal answer; it works just as well with brown as it does with navy. Dark navy trousers make for a more unexpected but equally compelling combination. In spring and summer, cream or pale beige in a lightweight gabardine or cavalry twill completes the picture beautifully.

The good news: brown shoes, in suede or leather, are already the most popular shoe colour for most well-dressed men. Your chukka boots and suede loafers are already doing the work.

On the Shade of Brown

This deserves some attention. Lighter browns, camel, beige, tobacco, are more immediately versatile and slightly easier to wear than deeper chocolate shades. They behave closer to a neutral and integrate naturally with a wardrobe built on blues and greys.

Darker browns ask a little more of you, but give a great deal in return. There is a particular shade that Italians sometimes call charcoal brown, a mélange in which traces of grey and even black run through a predominantly brown cloth. This is the brown that can wear very well with black shoes, a combination that might seem counterintuitive but has impeccable precedent. Look back at fashion plates from the 1930s and you will find brown and black worn together with real elegance and frequency.

Brown in Summer: The Case for Tobacco Linen

Come summer, tobacco brown deserves serious attention as a linen shade. We tend to see summer tailoring in sand, cream, or the obligatory dark navy, but a tobacco brown linen suit has a warmth and richness that those colours lack. It works equally well as a full suit or broken up as separates, handles both a wedding and a smart lunch with equal ease, and ages beautifully in linen.

Outerwear: Perhaps Brown's Greatest Moment

If there is one category where brown is not just underrated but genuinely underused, it is outerwear. A camel or beige overcoat is one of the most versatile garments in a tailored wardrobe, more so, arguably, than a grey or navy equivalent.

The reason is simple: it contrasts rather than coordinates. A camel covert coat worn over a navy suit reads as deliberate and considered. Worn over charcoal grey, it is equally strong. Worn with dark jeans and a grey cashmere crew neck, it is entirely at home. A dark navy overcoat over a navy suit, or a grey coat over grey trousers, risks looking flat and unintentional.

There is a further advantage. Brown, and particularly camel and tan, shows detail. Welted pockets, ticket pockets, working cuff buttons, turnbacks: all of these are features that can disappear into dark cloth. In lighter brown shades, they register clearly. If you are investing in a well-made coat, you want the craftsmanship to be visible.

The same logic extends to more casual outerwear. A field jacket in a cold, textured dark brown, particularly in a linen or wool blend, worn with dark denim or cream cord and a pair of chukka boots, represents a thoroughly convincing smart-casual weekend look.

Brown for the Evening

This may be the most unexpected territory, but it is worth addressing directly: brown is a genuinely sophisticated evening colour.

The conventional palette for evening wear runs from black through midnight blue to bottle green, burgundy, and claret. These are all fine choices. But a dark brown velvet, with or without black facings, is equally elegant, and arguably more interesting for being less expected.

The brown dinner jacket has a distinguished history. Noël Coward had one made in a short-collar style that remains one of the more memorable pieces of twentieth-century evening dress. A dark brown mohair, particularly one in which the weave carries a trace of black, with peak lapels, jetted pockets, and a single button closure is the kind of garment that works harder than you'd expect: with black evening trousers and black tie certainly, but also with a brown-green tartan, or even dressed down over navy trousers and a navy crew neck for a smart summer dinner.

This is evening dressing for someone who has moved beyond the obvious. Which, come to think of it, is precisely what brown tailoring has always been.

A Final Note on Fit

One genuine consideration when wearing brown: it will attract more attention than navy or grey. This is not a reason to avoid it, it is rather a reason to ensure the fit is excellent. An anonymous navy suit that doesn't fit quite right will pass largely unnoticed. A brown suit in the same condition will not. The colour invites scrutiny, so make sure the cloth and the cut can meet it.

This is, of course, another argument for going bespoke or made-to-measure when you do invest in brown tailoring. You are already going off the beaten path to find the cloth; it is worth the further step of ensuring it is made properly.

Brown rewards those who take it seriously. The colour has always belonged to a certain kind of dresser, one who is choosing for himself rather than for convention. It is, in the best sense, a mark of someone who knows exactly what they're doing.

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Ties, pocket squares, and jackets in every shade of brown; from tobacco to tawny, biscuit to chocolate.