Colour

'Colour' is a trend to strike fear into anyone's heart. It's so nebulous, for a start, so wide-ranging and unending. Where are our preferred directives toward never-before-heard-of 'blush' tones and 'ice-cream' shades? Where's the advice to stick to paler palettes if you're nervous, or warmer ones if you have a tan? Worry away, because designers this season aren't about to help you out. Indeed, colour is just about the only guideline — and that just about sums up the spring/summer 2011 mood. Fold away your neutrals, your greys and your blacks. Whether it comes in clashing or matching blocks, whether as prints, whether formal, casual or a bit of both, colour will rule wardrobes. And about time too.

These bright flashes and swathes of neons, jewels and primary shades are an indication that the fashion industry has picked itself up off the floor, stopped this self-abasement and flagellation in the face of a global crisis, and decided to have some fun. Ethereal Pantone-coloured ballgown skirts at Jil Sander were worn with simple white T-shirts. And for those unnerved by the baroque, the bananas and the baby monkeys at Prada, there were simple shift skirt suits, tunics and shift dresses that flattered and fit the body with over-sized, drop-shoulder sleeves. These came in a range of hues, from azure and forest to tangerine, accessorized with an equally vivid fur chubby. Meanwhile, Christopher Kane gave ladylike a fluoro daubing, with embossed lace separates in acid pinks, orange and bilious green, as well as chiffon dresses in paler representations. After so much minimalism and austerity comes a wave of the gaudy and the garish, washing down catwalks and high streets, and spraying everything in sight.

There's always colour for summer, of course, as designers prepare to sell sun-dresses to the sun-kissed and bikinis to the burnished; likewise a preponderance of white (which may well be the only option for the psychedelically-impaired this season) is significant enough merely of seasonal change and variation. But this much colour and in such vast riots is proof that fashion has stopped feeling guilty. Such rises in voltage come every so often: with the spread of pigment from sea-travellers returning from 'The Orient'; with the mass-marketing of dye during the industrialisation of nineteenth century Europe; with the advent of TV and glorious technicolour in the Fifties. Designer Claire McCardell was known for her rich pigment selections; her clothes became indicative of the onset of the modern age in America. Pierre Cardin too dressed the space-age generation in searing oranges and crimson, true hues that had never yet seemed so vivid.

And now here we are again, just in time for 3D televisions and the age of HD. The future may not look bright, but at least the clothes will.

Zoë Taylor has appeared in Le Gun, Bare Bones, Ambit and Dazed & Confused. She is currently working on her third graphic novella and an exhibition.