Brown Leather Jacket, Black T-Shirt, Faded Straight-Leg Jeans, Chelsea Boots

Four in the afternoon in the Marais, the light already going, leaves down on the cobbles outside a wine bar that has put its chairs out anyway. He is walking off a long lunch with his hands in his pockets and nowhere in particular to be. The jacket is brown leather gone soft and cracked across the chest, worn open, the collar sitting flat. Under it a plain black tee, tucked, a cream suede belt showing the whole way round, and the jeans faded to a chalky blue, loose enough to break twice over brown leather Chelsea boots.

It holds because the jacket is the only thing in it making any noise and everything else gets out of the way. Brown at the shoulders, black through the middle, chalky blue from the waist down, brown again at the floor, with the belt drawing one pale line across the join. Tucking the tee is doing more work than it looks: leave it out and the jacket and the jeans meet in the middle with nothing between them. Swap the tee for a fine grey crewneck and it sits down to dinner. Swap the boots for white sneakers and it happens two hours earlier. Leave the jacket open whatever you do; zipped, it turns into a different jacket.