the monochrome set

Brown is the colour, asserts British Vogue this month, boldly going where many a fashion pundit has gone before. Brown is the new black. Just as white before it was the new black, and camel and navy. If you believed the fashion writers of the past few seasons, your little black dress, black suit and the chic black trousers would be in the dustbin along with matt black furniture, bright red lippy and other Eighties' naff. Well you may believe it, but fashion people certainly don't. On a normal day at Marie Claire or Vogue fashion departments, 90 per cent of the clothing worn will be black. Fashion designers, too, live by double standards, producing satsuma and lime-drenched extravaganzas but never actually wearing it themselves.

Wearing black is an obsession, a female addiction. As hard to kick, it seems, as nicotine. In despair, Barbara Hulanicki, founder of 1960s shopping legend Biba and now running her own store, Fitz & Fitz, in Manhattan, has even created a 12-step guide to giving up black. Take it slowly, she urges. You must want to stop, and not believe it's hopeless. Like cigarettes, giving up black can be greatly assisted with the use of patches. Hulanicki says: "Introduce little spots of colour in your black, in shoes or accessories first." After a few months you will be able to wear predominantly colours. For it is a big shock to wear brash shades after years of dressing for the nunnery and you are likely to suffer withdrawal symptoms and relapse. Despite her international efforts, it is always the black which sells out first in Hulanicki's shop, closely followed by a subdued shade of dull cigar. She blames the fashion world as well as consumer demand. "Designers put so much black into their collections, it's too easy to wear black. People come into my shop and say they can't be bothered to wear colour."

What is it about the shade? Lesley Evans, Marie Claire's art editor, says: "I don't like wearing colourful clothes. It's so practical and slimming and smart. You feel more together and less fussy and all your wardrobe mixes together. I wouldn't get bored of it. Never. I started wearing black in the early Eighties. Recently I have started a concentrated effort to move into navy because black does make me look a bit pale. Every year I take note of the new colours - like lime this season - but then I think sod it and carry on with black."

Black in the art department of Marie Claire is like snow in Iceland - they need eight different words for the same thing - blue-black, grey- black, slate-black, black-black etc. Evans admits that three people in the office currently have the same pair of black French Connection hipsters. (Another addict, who wouldn't be named, confessed that, while she had six pairs of wildly differing cuts of black trousers, she suspected that non-black wearing colleagues thought that she wore the same pair all the time.)

Lesley Evans is suffering from Black and Navy Syndrome according to Mary Spillane, director of Colour Me Beautiful, a consultancy that advises people on colours that enhance their facial hues. "The obsession with black is a modern version of Victorianism, denying femininity. It's women fading into the background. It drains them. It is far too strong for most skins, requiring loads of make-up which the British don't wear. When Hello! magazine wanted to make the Duchess of York look good in black they had to give her a makeover to wipe her real skin tone out completely and give her a new one. Unless you have a very pale Celtic skin with dark hair, keep black for the lower half where it can slim you down."

But such restrictions are easier said than done for an addict, and Louisa Saunders, 34, a journalist at the Independent on Sunday, has a chronic problem. "I live with the mistaken belief that there is some kind of sophistication about it. Most of my clothes are black. I was even distraught after I had my daughter that I couldn't find a black nursing bra. I know it displays an inadequacy of imagination but I wouldn't dream of going out in the evening in any other colour. When you wear black all the time, you become almost embarrassed to wear something else. I find myself going into shops with the real aim of trying another colour but end up in changing rooms with armfuls of black - I just give in to it. I do have a Ghost dress that's sort of mauve but that's about it."

Spillane sympathises that black can be hard to let go. "It's comfortable, it's acceptable, it's a low-risk option. But we all look in the mirror with blind spots and sometimes you need someone to say, 'You'd look better in a softer shade'."

For many in the fashion world however there is a diehard attitude that black is better. That the changing of colours for different seasons is merely for ideas, perhaps seducing one to the odd crazy pair of orange cufflinks. Tiina Lakkonen, a fashion editor at Vogue, with blonde Finnish skin tones, wears black with pride. "I believe in style much more than fashion and black is a classic style concept. There are so many new directions every season that you really have to have the confidence of your own look, you don't need to be tied to a particular new shade. But black is beyond fashion. It always looks good.

"Yves St Laurent's 'Le Smoking' is one of the most beautiful items of clothing and it would look ridiculous in any other colour. I don't understand those who say black is draining, there is something about it which has always been chic. It is not a new thing. Many cultures in the world have always worn exclusively black."

The exception within the fashion world is Elle. Fashion director Marcus Von Ackermann says that in the offices of the magazine black has been banned. "It makes women look ill," he says simply.

"Women don't need to see a black polo neck in the fashion pages of a magazine any more. They've got the black coat and the black wardrobe. There is such a horrible uniform feeling about going to the collections and seeing 500 journalists all dressed in black. It's so depressing, so Eighties, we've all got bored of it. It's no good writing articles about the new prints if you're not prepared to wear them."

So if black has lost its appeal, will we see a black-free fashion world in five years' time? "No," said Von Ackermann ruefully, "because by that time it will be back again - as retro."