By DAVID COLMAN ANY woman worth her weight in back issues of Vogue will tell you that black is the new black this season, even for men. Go see for yourself: the men's mannequins in the window of Barneys New York this week are all decked out in black for the first time in seven-odd years. "Not since the height of Helmut," said Simon Doonan, the store's creative director. (Too bad Mr. Lang is not in business to see it.)
Two-button black suits, in finely worsted wool or velvet with tuxedo details like peak or shawl lapels, are fast becoming the uniform for meatpacking district Don Juans, who kit out their look with Chelsea boots, white dress shirts and skinny black ties. Next spring's wave of rockabilly clothes have so much black you'll need night-vision glasses just to try them on.
And why not black? It worked for Johnny Cash. It conveys that citified sense of aloof cool while telegraphing an understated elegance, even as it slims. Right?
Maybe if you're a woman.
Even a cursory glance reveals that it's hard for men to look good in black. Urban hipsters have come to embrace such a range of colors for shirts, pants and even suits that black, the onetime official color of the hip city dweller, now looks stickily mired in the tar pits of late 1980's smoothie-ness. It also summons a raft of characters that no one wants at the party: 80's art-star holdovers, for one; cerebral European architects, for another.
"No one wants to look like Sprockets," said Jim Moore, the creative director of GQ, referring to Mike Myers's "Saturday Night Live" spoof of a pretentious, black-clad German talk-show host.
Even black's biggest fans admit that it's tough to get right.
"Black has a lot of baggage," said Matt Dick, a creative consultant to design companies in San Francisco who has worn only black since high school. "People find it intimidating. It's like an actor that gets typecast. That's what happened to black."
Mr. Dick, 34, takes pains to vary his blacks - from saturated to faded, from slick and high-tech to textured or distressed - so that he is not wearing the same shade head to toe. "They vibrate on different levels, if that's not too California-esoteric for you," he said.
On trips to New York he has bought many of his clothes at Atelier, a three-year-old men's boutique in SoHo, where the Gothic-modern vibe (go-mo for short?) means racks of crisp yet creepy clothes in a palette of black and off-black. Karlo Steel, an owner of the shop and an inveterate lover of black, said that black clothes need a little antiheroics - a distressed look and a disillusioned outlook - to cut it.
"This isn't about just a bourgeois black cashmere turtleneck and slacks like it was in the 90's," Mr. Steel said. "It's not for everyone. On some level you don't choose black; it chooses you. It's a mind-set."
Rick Owens, the designer who once cited Morticia Addams as his muse, explains that the problem with black is that, as they used to say of bright colors, it's just too loud. "I used to wear nothing but black," Mr. Owens said. "But I thought it was too dramatic and too aggressive, too defiant. I got into a period of talking softly and being soft. I turned my black into gray."
Layering his favorite Middle Earth tones of Dark Shadow and Dust, as he calls them - a blackish green and a light gray-green fog - with weathered black leather, Mr. Owens manages to turn down black's volume to a level more worthy of the word cool.
If folding gray - should one call it light black? - into the mix makes the look jell, the same goes for mixing different fabrics, like polished cotton, velveteen, denim and corduroy. "It's all about how you put it together," Mr. Moore said. "I wear something black every day. There's nothing wrong with it."
Nor is it hard to find, with excellent black clothing available this season at every price. Atelier's Carpe Diem leather shirt, at $2,200, and Carol Christian Poell distressed boots, at $1,350, work unexpectedly well with the sheen of Levi's synthetic "Tex Twill" jeans. A velvet sport coat from DKNY contrasts snappily with a distressed Margiela-influenced sweater from H&M and a chunky cashmere scarf from Banana Republic. Or offset Mr. Owens's Grim Reaper hoodie with a black broadcloth dress shirt with French cuffs.
What black does not mix well with is bright colors: a sharp black blazer does not look so sharp paired with a sport-striped shirt.
But what use would anyone with a truly black outlook have for color?
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