Fashion Turns Over a New Leaf

Turn over a new leaf this autumn.

The fall fashion winds are blowing toward baroque and romantic 1920s-era styles -- a funky, vintage look that's a 180-degree turn from the austere black simplicity that's been in vogue for the last decade. For both men and women, luxurious layers will be used to fight chills while accessories and fine details, like buttons and brooches, will add a personal wrinkle.

Browns, tans, greens and even purple will be the new blacks, with autumn's sartorial sensibility all about being "up" -- covered up, dressed up and grown up. Designers have ditched cotton jerseys for professorial tweed. Belly-baring shirts and cleavage cuts have been pushed aside in favor of cute cardigan sets and conservative lines. Once again, nightclubs and conference rooms are very different places.

This week's Good Life tackles the autumnal majesty of fall fashion, a primer on what you'll see in stores and why everyone's buying it.

Suit Yourself

Dressing up for work is not a new trend, but this season's suits are a compromise between the boxy return-to-form of the last two years and the "casual Fridays forever" mentality of the dot-com era. Expect to see a softer silhouette that, to some, may seem more at home in rumpled academia than a shark-infested boardroom. But the form had the change to become more functional -- people hit the gym at lunch, so much of the padding needed to fill out a suit is natural. Cuts are changing accordingly.

This new ethos in suit-making is embodied in Giorgio Armani's fall line. The designer has two new jackets: a "George" jacket, which is cut with higher armholes and uses less shoulder padding to provide a more fluid look, and a "Beckham" jacket, named for the English soccer player, which costs $1,095 and is crafted from soft wools, so it's even more unstructured and loose. Some of Armani's new jackets are so light, they're almost sweaters.