Fashion has a new black. Guys, this is a big moment. If fashion had a Sistine Chapel, white smoke would be pluming from the chimneys as it does when the Vatican gets a new pope.
We haven’t had a new It colour for ages. I mean, OK, there was Bottega green earlier this year, which some people may have gotten a bit overexcited about (hi!), but hasn’t yet stuck. Millennial pink is still a thing, but it jumped the shark once it was on so many kitchen walls that it became magnolia for Gen Z.
The twist is, this new black is actually old black. As in, black clothes that look old. Faded black. Washed-out black. The most-hyped designer-meets-high-street collection of last summer was Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga, a 36-piece collaboration between Kanye West, Demna Gvasalia and Gap. West is a troubled man of questionable political instincts, but capable of pure genius, not just in music but in fashion marketing, as evidenced by the fact that Julia Fox’s wardrobe dominated the soft news agenda for the entirety of their six-week relationship this year.
Gvasalia is the designer of Balenciaga, probably the most interesting luxury label in the world right now, and Gap is a sleeping giant of the global high street. The clothes they have made together are pared back in the extreme – oversized hoodies, boxy T-shirts, basic stuff – but their one distinguishing feature is the dominant colour. Everything comes in washed-out black.
The colour that black denim and cotton fades to after it’s been washed and worn and around the block a few times isn’t really black at all. It’s a grainy charcoal, heather-grey in some lights, bruised purple in others. It is Kate Moss in washed-out black jeans in her post-boho Pete Doherty era. It is designer Hedi Slimane in his Dior Homme pomp. It is that desaturated Ramones T-shirt that for about five years in certain hipster postcodes was ubiquitous on men, women and kids. It is the hoodie worn by the late great designer Virgil Abloh that became his uniform for the post-catwalk show bow, and the T-shirt men wear to the gym.
Halfway between inky black jeans and straight-up sweatpant-grey, washed-out black is equal parts streetwear and sportswear – where most of real-life fashion has washed up. But it has a vibe all of its own. Wearing inky, saturated black used to stand for sophistication and cool, but black-black is now so route one that we barely see it. What washed-out black has is the vibe that wearing proper black used to have: sophistication, mystery, with just a dash of too-cool-for-school world-weariness. It has a little bit of early 90s grunge, and a little bit of early 00s hedonism. Plus, it has a little bit of apocalypse-adjacent doominess and it looks like it might have been bought pre-worn, which combine to make it very 21st century.
Like millennial pink before it, washed-out black is an ideal early autumn colour, for when you’re ready to swap out your summer wardrobe. A pair of faded black jeans works tonally as a bridge between neutrals in different shades – a navy T-shirt and a white trainer, say – where black jeans would look a little blunt. If you’re wearing black top-to-toe, a washed-out black piece alongside saturated black lends a depth of focus that gives more visual impact.
And the best part? If you’ve got black clothes that are getting old and faded, you’ve got the new black – Old Black – in your wardrobe already.
