Reader Question: Are there any colours that don’t go together?

When I saw this question my first instinct was to say no. No, there aren’t really any colours that don’t go together any more. Old taboos can now be freely broken – pairings such as navy/black, pink/red, pink/orange, brown/black etc are all fine these days. My colleague was wearing pink and burgundy the day I wrote this, and it looked great!

I will add my usual proviso here though, and say that when you wear say navy and black together you should look as though you meant to do it. A navy dress or trousers with a black top, black shoes and perhaps a blue or navy scarf is good; navy tights with a black dress and black shoes is not. As long as it looks deliberate (as opposed to looking like you got dressed in the dark) then you will be fine. I say this a lot but a good way to tie together two colours you are unsure about is to use a print that incorporates both colours. Leopard print is a great example for making a black/brown pairing look intentional as it will usually include both colours, plus a mix of oranges, creams and possibly yellows.

I will just give one caveat to the above and that is you might want to avoid wearing red and green together if it’s not December. There’s nothing wrong with pairing these colours and if you want to do it, go for it, but to me they tend to look a bit Christmassy together so personally I would avoid it.