“Black as midnight black, as pitch, blacker than the foulest witch ” is a quote from Ridley Scott’s 1985 fairytale of a movie: ‘Legend’ ––and I think it perfectly illustrates the sinister connotations that this colour, or lack of colour (if you’re so inclined), has had in our culture. It’s associated with the dark forces of our common fates ––death, devilish interference and its funereal aftermath. Not the sort of connotations one would hope to be associated with if one owned a fashion label perhaps ––and yet the most avant-garde of those labels have turned this much maligned of our colourless colours into a virtue. How have they achieved this? I hear you ask, well ––by using it as a neutral background to best display their use of abstract cutting and textural juxtapositions, none of which, I would argue, would be possible or merely obvious in any other colour: for example, we’ve never heard anyone praise both a designer’s avant-garde use of cutting and materials, while also praising