Monochrome mode
What you can learn from people who wear one color only. Plus: high-level low-profile sneakers, big jeans, mechanic's jackets, Mesh Shirts Watch continues & more
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Do you feel more yourself when you’re wearing a particular color? Have you ever dreamed of tunneling deep into that feeling and making a permanent, cozy home for yourself there by eliminating every other hue but that one from your closet?
Some people do exactly that, and they fascinate me. Seen in one light, this is an eccentric, extreme version of “uniform dressing.” But there’s something bewitchingly simplifying about the idea, too: Imagine having the self-restraint to abstain from endless chromatic possibilities… You open your closet and see a soothing, uninterrupted field of coherent color…
I don’t think I’ll ever get there myself, but if you treat it as a thought experiment, going Monochrome Mode can clarify the way we think about getting dressed, and — as you’ll see below — unlock something powerful for us all about the importance of silhouette.
Also in today’s Concorde, we’ve got:
A very sick low-profile sneaker that’s been around for decades, yet people are sleeping on it. And you can find pairs for as low as $12 secondhand
The most beautiful eBay listing I’ve ever seen
Mesh-tee watch continues
Big beautiful unisex jeans, mechanic’s jackets, utilitarian totes (mad respect to Jane but f--k a Birkin bag!)
And more
Let’s get to it —
In matters of the heart, I am steadfast and true, but when it comes to color I’m promiscuous. I’ve been in a green-leaning phase for the past 6 months or so, but I’ve also been working in tomato reds, navy blues, dark purples, chocolate browns, buttery yellows, and metallic silvers, among other colors.
And to answer my own question up top, I feel very much like myself wearing all of them. (The only color I avoid is pink — I had a torrid affair with it from the ages of 6-10 that ruined it for me thereafter.)
But I’m deeply intrigued by monochromatic dressers. Specifically, the ones who don’t approaching it as sartorial Soylent, i.e., “one less thing to think about as I ‘optimize’ all the exploration and joy out of my life.” I’m thinking of people like the zither god Laraaji, below — among the most blessed Spyplane interview subjects ever — who’s worn orange almost exclusively since the late 1970s. He was inspired by Hare Krishnas at first, but came to see the saffron-like orange he wears as his way of harnessing the warmth and power of the sun.
Or take Elizabeth “Sweetheart” Eaton Rosenthal, below bottom left, pictured walking in the Collina Strada SS25 show. She’s a former textile designer who went full green gang in 2000, after realizing the color just makes her feel happy.
I also think of the kitsch monasticism of Sophie Calle’s “The Chromatic Diet,” a 1997 photo series where she documented a week of meals comprised entirely of same-color foods served on same-color dishes with same-color flatware, as seen above. I can’t imagine Calle actually ate what was in the pictures: the pink menu, for instance, consisted of ham, taramasalata, strawberry ice cream and rosé.
More palatable are the power-red his-n-hers suits from Lemaire’s fall 2021 collection, above middle right, which I would still rock today. And the most familiar, least outré version of dressing monochromatically, of course, is wearing head-to-toe black. An underrated reason why this move tends to look so chic is because it forces you to focus on the overall silhouette of an outfit, rather than individual pieces. That holds true for any monochromatic scheme, and it represents a subtle but important mental shift: Channel your inner Yohji Yamamoto and think three-dimensionally about an outfit, rather than in the 2-D way we’re prone to when we’re just trying to find a top that “goes” with our pants.
In other words, going Monochrome Mode encourages you to treat getting dressed more like an act of sculpture (building a volume with a single material) and less like collage (laying down disparate pieces that look good together). Even a color as symbolically bland and literally liminal as gray has its own magic when approached with this “making shapes” mentality.
Here’s a great illustration from a fall 2025 collection: