In my neck of the woods, Winters are long and Springs are cold. As much as I would like to sport light weight items in Springtime, I end up wearing Winter clothing and footwear for a good part of the season. But I get bored, really bored, with my Winter wardrobe after wearing it for months on end. Most of all, I get tired of wearing black boots, black frocks and jackets and dark outerwear.

Because I desperately feel the need to refresh my look for Spring, I’ve learnt to build up an assortment of Winter weight wardrobe items that don’t look overly Wintery. The following items use colour to say “Springtime”, but will keep you warm:

• Light and brightly coloured footwear: You’re after shoes that you can wear with socks or hose, but that aren’t black and heavy. Think of boots, booties, loafers or oxfords in colours like grey, red, blue, chestnut, taupe, tan, cream and white.
• Light or brightly coloured coats, jackets and trenches: I wear a bright blue wool coat, a cream leather jacket and a quilted cream trench coat in Spring time. I hope to add a citron wool coat to my Spring outerwear collection too. Unless it’s really cold, my heavy wool grey coat and long black puffer will rest up until the following Winter.
• Light or brightly coloured knitwear: I actually wear brightly coloured pullovers and cardigans alongside their black and grey counterparts all through Winter. But bright knitwear is all I wear at the start of Spring. They are great layering pieces and signal to the world that warm weather is on the way.
• Textured nude tights: As far as possible I like to say goodbye to black and grey hose in Spring time. I prefer to substitute the look with flesh coloured micro fishnets or polka dot hose instead.

I sport brightly coloured scarves and handbags all year round, but consider introducing these in Spring if you normally stick to dark colours and neutrals for Winter.

Why post about this in Autumn when Spring seems so far away? Well, it might affect what you purchase for Winter right now. If you try looking for the perfect pair of tan boots in February, you probably won’t find them. And you might think twice about adding another pair of black boots, black frock or a black jacket into your Winter wardrobe mix.