Cool Winter Men: Suits, Shirts and Colours That Work

Cool Winter is the most purely cool season in menswear. Everything you wear should have blue in it somewhere, and once you accept that the wardrobe gets simple.

Cool Winter men read unmistakably cool: hair from dark ash brown to black, skin with a blue or pink cast rather than a golden one, and eyes in cool blue, grey or cool brown. Contrast is high, though usually a shade less extreme than Deep Winter.

The distinguishing feature is that warmth of any kind looks wrong quickly. Where other cool seasons tolerate a warm accent, this one does not, and that is actually useful: it makes the rules unambiguous.

The Cool Winter palette

Hex codes included, because online shopping is where a palette earns its keep and product photography lies constantly about colour.

• Cobalt#2456A6
• Sapphire#15487A
• Cool Raspberry#B7295A
• Blue-Red#C21E4A
• Magenta#B01E68
• Cool Emerald#1F6E5A
• Cool Purple#5C2A6E
• Lavender#B9A5D6
• Ice Blue#A8C7E0
• Charcoal#36393F
• Cool Navy#1F2A44
• Blue-Black#14161C
• Cool Grey#9AA3AD
• Crisp White#F4F6F8

The full breakdown, including the neighbouring seasons, is on the season palette page.

Suits and tailoring

True navy is your best suit, and it is a better first buy than black. Cool Winter navy should be genuinely blue rather than the slightly warm, slightly greyed navy most high-street suiting uses.

Charcoal second, in a cool blue-grey rather than a brown-grey. Blue-black works for evening. What does not work is any suit with a warm cast, which rules out most mid-greys and all tobacco and olive tailoring.

Shirts

Crisp white, always. Cool Winter is the season that makes a plain white shirt look expensive.

After that: cool light blue, ice blue, and a cool pale grey. Pink is available to you in a way it is not to most men, but only cool pink, the blue-based kind that sits near ice pink rather than salmon.

Avoid cream, ecru and any shirt described as 'stone'. They will read as slightly dirty against your skin.

Ties and knitwear

Cobalt and sapphire are the signature. A cobalt tie is the single most Cool Winter thing you can own and it does more for this palette than any neutral.

Blue-red rather than orange-red for a classic red tie, and cool raspberry or magenta if you want something less conventional. Cool emerald and cool purple round it out. Knitwear in cool navy, charcoal and blue-black covers everything else.

Denim

This is the season denim was made for. Cool indigo, raw or rinsed, in any depth from mid to dark, plus black and blue-black denim.

What to avoid is warm fading. Denim that has gone orange or brown at the knees and pockets pulls warmth into an otherwise cool outfit. Stonewash with a grey cast is fine; stonewash with a tan cast is not.

Outerwear

A true navy or charcoal overcoat, and a blue-black wool coat for evening. Cool Winter is one of the few palettes where a genuinely blue coat looks correct rather than eccentric.

Skip camel, tan and olive outerwear entirely. If you want a lighter coat for spring, cool grey is the substitute.

Hair and beard colour

Keep any colouring cool and reasonably dark: ash brown, cool dark brown, blue-black. Golden, caramel and copper highlights are the fastest way to make Cool Winter skin look blotchy.

Beards are the common complication, because a lot of dark-haired men grow a beard with red in it. Against a cool palette that redness is conspicuous. A cool-toned dye or simply keeping it shorter both work; matching your head hair exactly usually looks less natural than going a half-shade lighter and cooler.

Grey is straightforwardly good here. Cool grey against cool skin is harmonious, and salt-and-pepper needs no correction at all.

Metals, watches and glasses

Silver, steel, white gold and platinum, and this is one palette where the rule is close to absolute. Cool-toned metals against cool skin look intentional; yellow gold looks like it belongs to someone else.

Glasses in black, gunmetal or cool tortoiseshell. Black leather over brown for belts, straps and shoes, which is the opposite of the autumn advice and worth remembering when you shop.

What to avoid

Everything warm: camel, rust, mustard, orange-red, olive, warm brown, cream and beige. Also avoid muted dusty shades, which belong to the summer seasons and go flat on Winter contrast.

The single most common Cool Winter mistake in menswear is the tan or camel overcoat, because it is sold as a classic to every man regardless of colouring. On you it is the one coat that will consistently look slightly off.

For the underlying reading, our skin tone analyzer explains what undertone, depth and contrast actually are.

Not sure where you land? take the free color season quiz: six questions, no photo needed.

FAQ