Can you wear colour to Glyndebourne?

Yes, you can wear colour to Glyndebourne Festival. Six eveningwear combinations explore its scale, texture and relationship to other colours, with daylight included in the decision.

Tobias Hoheisel's designs for Nikolaus Lehnhoff's Káťa Kabanová, first staged at Glyndebourne in 1988, gave the scenery a vivid palette around comparatively restrained costumes. Orange and purple skies, yellow grass and red interiors created a world whose colour could change as the scene developed.

The surviving designs reward looking at the relationship between a figure and its surroundings. The stage can contain strong colour without placing all of it on the people. In your own clothes, too, scale and neighbouring colours are worth considering alongside the name of the shade you like.

Colour does not need to cover the whole person

Glyndebourne's Festival guidance welcomes expressive formalwear; colour does not need to be smuggled into an otherwise black wardrobe. A red dress gives it a broad area, a green evening jacket a more bounded one, and a printed square a small concentration near the face or lapel.

Consider which arrangement you enjoy before choosing the accessories. A navy coat can surround a raspberry dress, while pale pink above green trousers gives two colours comparable importance. The amount of each colour changes again when the jacket opens or the coat comes off. Judge those versions as part of the outfit, rather than an interruption to it.

For her: three ways to use colour

One field of colour

A raspberry or cobalt crepe dress gives colour a generous, largely uninterrupted surface. Dark shoes and a navy or black evening coat provide a quieter edge, with a small bag in one of those darker tones. Earrings can add light without asking the neckline to carry another large area of colour.

The cloth still matters. A matte crepe and a glossy satin in similar shades can produce very different impressions, and folds divide a plain colour into light and shadow. Look at the dress through a few ordinary movements and make sure its lining allows the shape to settle naturally.

Colour divided

Deep green evening trousers and a pale pink silk blouse make two distinct areas that can remain visible beneath a dark jacket. Pink brings light to the upper half; green supplies depth below. Dark green or black flats can extend the trouser line, while a compact dark bag keeps the smaller objects related.

Choose the blouse's volume alongside the trousers. A fuller leg can take a tidier neckline and sleeve; a softer blouse may look clearer above a straighter cut. The proportion determines how much of each colour the eye receives, so a change of tuck or jacket length can alter the balance without adding anything new.

A printed skirt

A large print containing blue, cream and red can sit beneath a plain navy or black top. Examine the pattern folded around the body: a cream area may become more prominent at one side, or a red motif may disappear into a pleat. The skirt's drawing should remain pleasing after it has acquired movement.

Keep the bag and shoes simple at first, then try one coloured addition if you want it. They need not repeat every shade in the print. A plain short jacket can frame the waist and leave the skirt's larger shapes visible; a scarf is optional when the outfit already contains a drawing you enjoy.

For him: colour inside formalwear

Midnight blue

Midnight-blue eveningwear keeps the familiar arrangement of white evening shirt, black bow tie and black shoes while varying the surrounding cloth. The blue may be subtle in one light and clearly separate from black in another. Compare the whole suit outdoors before choosing the pocket square.

A white square can provide all the contrast required. If adding pattern, look at the small part that will show above the pocket, including its lightest colour. The opened square may tell you less about the outfit than that narrow visible edge.

A green or burgundy jacket

A green or burgundy evening jacket with black formal trousers gives colour a definite boundary at the waist. Keep the shirt white and the bow tie black for a conventional evening arrangement, with polished black shoes below. Examine the lapel and the cloth together; the surface is part of what makes the jacket read as eveningwear.

A square need not reproduce the jacket. White can make a clean interruption, while a quieter print can introduce a related tone. Try the jacket without one as well, particularly in velvet, whose changing surface already supplies considerable variation. Choose a weight that suits the weather, then fit the outer coat over it.

Colour in a smaller place

A black dinner suit can carry a patterned pocket square, a coloured silk scarf within the outer coat or a dark-toned sock. Choose one place to begin and look at the result in the complete outfit. A few visible centimetres beside a white shirt can register strongly without requiring a larger addition.

Keep a pocket square proportionate to the pocket and a coat scarf clear of its fastening. These are different uses of silk: a full scarf can be too bulky in a breast pocket, and neither replaces the black bow tie in the conventional dinner-suit combination described here.

Daylight is part of the fitting room

Look at the actual garments near a window and, where possible, outside. Dark green can appear nearly black under one light; a blue may look brighter under another. Put the intended coat and bag beside the main clothes as well, since their relationship is what you will be wearing.

If two colours seem awkward, try changing the quantity before rejecting the pairing. A narrow band of pink beneath a jacket differs from a full pink blouse above trousers. Altering an opening or fold can be enough to discover the arrangement you meant.

Do not dress as scenery

Hoheisel's designs belong to a particular production and its dramatic world. They need not become a palette for the audience. A visitor can admire an intensely coloured stage while choosing black eveningwear, or prefer a strong dress without finding an operatic explanation for it.

Give your own response the same freedom. Black, navy, pink and green are available choices with different effects, rather than measures of courage or sophistication. The useful judgement concerns the clothes in front of you and the relationships you want between them.

The sky changes

By the end of the visit, a colour chosen in daylight will have appeared under several kinds of light. That variability can be part of its pleasure: a fold may have become darker, or a once-inconspicuous thread may have caught the light at dinner.

Choose an arrangement you like in more than one setting. It need not maintain exactly the same appearance all evening; some cloth is most interesting when it reveals something you did not see in the first fitting.