Nine colours, and why each one is in the book. Written for the people who want to know what they are actually looking at before it arrives.
Ecru
Undyed, or near enough. Warmer than white and considerably more forgiving — white is unforgiving about everything, including the person wearing it. Ecru sits with navy, olive, rust, brown, black and denim without an argument. It appears as the ground in The Pavilion, The Interval and The Awning, and on its own in The Plain Hour.
Navy
The band across The Pavilion, and the whole of The Last Train. Deep enough to read as almost-black at night, blue enough to read as blue at four in the afternoon. Navy is what you wear when black would be too much and grey would be too little.
Rust
The one people hesitate over and then wear constantly. It is a warm, brick-leaning orange — nothing fluorescent about it. Against cream it reads as seventies awning; against sand trousers it reads as considered. It only appears in The Awning.
Olive
Twice: blocked into The Long Field, and solid in The Orchard. Green that has been rained on — muted, slightly grey, closer to army surplus than to anything tropical. It is the most useful colour in menswear that most people never buy.
Charcoal
Grey with the lights off. In the yoke of The Long Field it plays weather. In The Smoke Room it plays the whole shirt. Sharper than mid-grey, softer than black, and the easiest of the nine to wear under a jacket.
Black
Only The Interval, and only because the ecru stripes give it somewhere to go. Black knitwear on its own can flatten in photographs and in person; broken by a stripe it holds shape and depth.
Oatmeal
The Weather Report. Not a flat colour at all — a pale ground with rust, slate and cream flecked through the yarn itself. Under a bulb it is warm. By a window it goes cool and grey. Photographs never quite catch it, which is part of why we made it.
All nine, side by side: Volume One.
A note on screens: every monitor and phone renders colour differently, and knitted texture makes it harder still. If a shade matters to you, write to us before ordering and we will describe it honestly rather than optimistically.