Five ways to brighten up your wardrobe without looking like you just stepped off Sesame Street.

It’s not at all true to say that, when it comes to style, colour is inherently unmasculine. Were we living and breathing as recently as 200 years ago (fingers firmly pinched around nostrils, probably), we’d find that some of the most-admired male dressers of the day were stalking around in brightly coloured frock coats, embroidered in dazzling threads of rainbow hues. In medieval times, when certain dyes such as purple were rather difficult to get hold of, wearing a bright colour meant you were rich and powerful – the equivalent of wearing a rare Rolex, or carrying a Hermès bag. Before that, we’re more open to speculation. But, ponder this: do you think they all wore navy to The Last Supper? Well, Mr Leonardo da Vinci certainly didn’t. In fact, the lack of vibrancy in the typical male wardrobe is a decidedly 20th-century invention. One that we can, if we’re generalising wildly, attribute to the homogeny of industrialisation, the rise of corporate culture and, as recently as the 1990s, the invention of a sleek, rigorous minimalism (thank you, Helmut Lang, Jil Sander and Prada) that brought 50 shades of grey to boardrooms everywhere long before the book of the same name appeared to devour our souls.

The point we’re trying to make here, perhaps a little long-windedly, is that colour in menswear has a historical pedigree. But it also has a bright future. Say what you like about last spring’s “millennial” pink trend, one of the most intriguing things about it is that it wasn’t just us style hacks droning on about it. You saw it happening in day-to-day life. At the other end of the funnel, when you look at recent collections from the most trend-setting designers, from Balenciaga to AMIRI and everything in between, a bold use of colour is perhaps one of the few threads that ties everything together in this quasi-ironic, bloggable and oddly discontinuous era of fashion history. The movement is wide-reaching: even august luxury houses such as Ermenegildo Zegna and Berluti are currently offering pieces in, let us say, outré shades (have you seen this leather jacket?). It’s also developing: one of the overarching trends of the AW18 collections is bold primary colours.

Really, it’s not all that surprising. The reality is that, as we enter a new era of working life in which freelancing, remote working and – sorry, just need to swallow back some vomit – “disruptive” behaviour are looking like the new norm, our style aspirations will continue to diverge away from corporate conformity (part-and-parcel of the office-based nine-to-five) and towards studied, ingenious individuality. And colour is key to this: it’s a great way to make an impact. Having said that, we’re still in a transition period. No one’s quite ready to go full Sesame Street just yet, and until the road network turns technicolour, we’ll have to continue to mull over how best to work the new colours coming our way into our existing, reassuringly drab wardrobes. Which is why we at MR PORTER have put together the following guide, which aims to explain the – actually not so complicated – procedure of choosing, combining and carrying off colour in a way that will make people look, not stare.