Leather jacket and flare jeans: the season turn

The last week of August creates its own micro-season: daytime is still summer, evening is already autumn. This outfit is built exactly for that gap. At the center is a leather-effect balloon-sleeve jacket — its voluminous sleeves widen the silhouette, while its cropped length still leaves the flare jeans' high waist visible. Underneath is a soft, off-shoulder knit: with the jacket off, the outfit is summery; put it on, and it's transitional. Two seasons, one look.

The bottom half plays with proportion. Sienna flare crop jeans nod to the seventies with their bell hem while ending right at the ankle; crinkled-look, soft-shaft heeled boots fill exactly that gap. The relationship between hem and boot shaft is this outfit's fine-tuning: if the hem falls over the boot, the effect is lost, while a hem that ends at the ankle paired with a loose shaft lengthens the leg.

The whole palette comes down to three words: black, khaki, stone. A mini crossbody bag covers the practical side, while a wool-blend baker-boy cap ties the outfit to a street-style aesthetic. These six pieces are the first sentence of a grammar you'll see come back again and again on this page in the weeks ahead: a dark ground, a single warm accent, finishing the proportion with boots.

In this outfit

• Pull&Bear — Leather effect balloon jacket
• Stradivarius — Soft-touch off-the-shoulder knit
• Mango — Sienna flare crop jean
• Bershka — Slouchy heeled ankle boots
• Stradivarius — Mini crossbody bag
• Massimo Dutti — Wool blend cap

• layering
• denim
• black