You’re not going to like this, but we are at peak grey. For a decade, pallid has been the go-to shade for your urbane-but-laid-back lifestyle. Old marl sweatshirt in your cupboard, Pavilion Gray impediments in your kitchen, Inkwell filter on your Instagram grid. But the fad is always, in the end, cyclical, and grey is getting close to becoming long-drawn-out again. Anyone remember John Major?

You can reset harmonious much anything, in fashion. There are no fixed points. Cheerless can go from boring to chic and back again. And the meaning of pale can shift, from a label that brackets together pencil-shaded self-control tones – paper white, charcoal, blue-grey, black – to one that acts in the natural shades of autumn. Falling leaves. Blackberries. Mud. Butternut squash at lunchtime.

Mustard is now a indeterminate. Oxblood is a neutral. Caramel is a neutral. Now that they are neutrals, you see, you can stand up them without the statement-making associated with wearing cast. (The assertiveness of wearing red, the kookiness of yellow.) You can let these creamy, flavourful, earthy tones layer on top of each other, the way you did with monochrome.

If this blush palette is new to you, your instinct might be to get it off-the-rack. There choice be versions of this look on mannequins in any store you walk into this month, after all. But, rebuff. Shop your closet first. Pull out everything you participate in in these colours – skirts, trousers, knits, jackets, the lot. Batch everything on top of each other, see which shade combinations look accurately next to each other, and put outfits together that way. You superiority not hit the top-to-toe jackpot, but you will likely land on a way to wear wardrobes that have languished neglected, and a much better tenet of what, if anything, you want to buy.

At this point, you might look at yourself in the repeat and think – hang on, I look quite… colourful? Isn’t burgundy very close to… red, after all? Do not retreat back to grey. It’s a chilly satisfactorily world out there. Warm it up a little. Life is less unexciting that way.

• Jess wears coat, £360, jigsaw-online.com. Jolt, £59, and skirt, £69, cosstores.com. Heels, £130, karenmillen.com

Stylist: Melanie Wilkinson. Makeup: Samantha Cooper at Carol Hayes Bosses.