To add chic to a new suit or coat, to disguise a “last season” one, add colour, flamboyantly, but after much thought. Hats, scarves, gloves, are the chief colour accents.

Choose accents that are interchangable with suit, coat, frock. Or if you have one outfit you particularly love, choose two or even three sets of accessories to go with it.

Be bold with colours, be original. Give freshness to your old grey suit, your black hat, by tucking in a limegreen scarf. To a black coat add a ruby scarf or a ruby velvet muff-bag. Try tan with petrel blue.

Remember that two accessory shades are better than one. Therefore petrel blue plus tan plus navy equals 1939, whereas petrel blue alone or with one contrast may look 1938. To the new green-blue add rust and mustard—rust hat and bag, mustard scarf. With a blue suit (spring-like now that we have passed the shortest day), wear a lavender blouse, and somewhere (a clip on your bag, a buckle on your hat perhaps) a touch of red. Over a fuchsia frock, slip on your threequarter black astrakhan and knot casually round your neck a silk-velvet scarf in deep apple-green.

In most seasons, accents as well as clothes are “ready-made,” but this year you yourself may choose the finishing touches, thus realising in part the artistry of fashion-designing.