The green is such an innocuous color that no one would ever dream of defining it as a disruptive element – sure, outside of fashion, in the world of cinema and fantasy, it’s a color associated with “villainous” characters (think of Marvel’s Doctor Doom or Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty) but more to contrast villains with heroes clad in primary colors than for a negative association. Yet, throughout the season, green has had a vaguely anarchic function, namely to insert a gentle “disturbance” into the symphonies of neutrals that have dominated various looks, but also to represent an alternative to grays, beige, blues, and blacks that serve as the base for numerous palettes, including the “seasonal” color, which would be red. Shades ranging from Veronese green to pine green have been seen on blouses and velvets from Emporio Armani, on a leather trench from JW Anderson and Blumarine, on turtlenecks from MM6 Maison Margiela, and on many of the dresses from Fforme in New York. Darker yet more vibrant greens were featured on a certain evening dress from Dsquared2 and on several models presented by Egonlab; there were also cascades of green in the latest collections from Saint Laurent, Loewe, Jil Sander, and Fendi, where, as also seen at Etro, a single green sleeve represented the anarchic element in otherwise balanced looks; Prada did the same, with a more acidic shade, contrasting it with pink or incorporating it in the form of pants or a sweater alongside blue and gray.

Elsewhere, a very pale sage green appeared at Rick Owens and Marco Rambaldi, at Sacai and Simone Rocha, at Auralee and S.S. Daley. And the summary list we’ve made doesn’t even mention the classic almost military or camo green, in darker or lighter shades, ranging from pistachio to forest green, seen at Bottega Veneta, Bally, Burberry, Ferragamo, Hermès, Lemaire, to name just a few. The interesting part, however, is that despite its widespread presence, green has remained a complementary hue to the season’s main color protagonists, brown and red, except on the Gucci runway where Sabato De Sarno gave it ample space, especially for one of the key wool coats in the collection. In all these different occasions, however, the color was not used in its usual somewhat sentimental correlation with nature, with spring and so on, but rather as an unusual alternative to safer neutral tones in the case of sage or dark green, or as mentioned earlier, to create color contrasts in ensembles with more traditional tones: the most frequent being black and white, seen at Valentino and Bottega Veneta, but at Loewe or Issey Miyake Homme Plissè it was clearly interpreted as a “base” on which to build even more everyday looks.

We’re far away, however, from that “green fever” that gripped the world during Daniel Lee’s time: that green was a monolithic imposition, without variations or nuances, but above all, it existed in a totalizing manner rather than as one element among others. The green (or rather, the many greens) we see on the runway in recent weeks and certainly in those to come perhaps represent an attempt to escape from the monotony that arose after the streetwear maximalism of a few years ago and after the wave of formal neoclassicism that followed it: green could be the color of “post-quiet luxury” – that mediation solution between the relative banality of classic colors (both neutral classics and others now too mainstream like red) and the functionality of a color as sellable as it is variable in a large number of shades, as well as genderless. As we continue to watch the shows in Paris looking for other shades of green, however, we feel compelled to recommend the color to those already thinking about what color to wear in spring. Thank us later.