Despite the title, this is not a culinary post. Since last year, when I saw a pair of Baum und Pferdgarten walnut-coloured trousers, I’ve been thinking about the return of brown. I cannot find these trousers online any longer, though, so maybe I invented them to justify my belief that brown is becoming a fashion player again.

Fashion is of course all about things coming and going and coming again, in a slightly different guise. Brown, however, hasn’t really come for a long time. There have been beige and tan and camel – browns for wussies. To be frank with you, it is not a colour I gravitate towards most of the time, but true browns seem extremely desirable to me at the moment: the tones of milk chocolate, shiny precious woods and coffee with a tiny bit of milk all look fresh and beautiful.

I have not seen much brown around in fashion yet, but beauty is a different matter. There has been a 90s-inspired revival going on for a while now, but so far, most of the colours have still been leaning towards grey or wine or purple. This has changed with Dior’s autumn beauty collection, where you have a lot of straightforward brown going on. Instead of the usual taupe and greige (which I love), there is the rich dark chocolate of Obscure nail polish and the deep shimmery brown of the Parisian Sky palette. The whole selection is gorgeous (and I’m not usually a Dior fan) and to my mind more interesting than Chanel’s much-hyped red collection.

I very rarely get more than one item from any makeup collection, but this time I bought two (and I’m interested in the contour sticks and colour correctors as well): Skyline nail polish and Scandalous gloss. The first is a delicious creamy brown with a hint of wine and the second a very glossy plummy brown. I have not tried the polish yet, but I have worn the lip gloss for two days and I love it.

Now, I’m not going to deny that wearing brown on your lips is challenging. I’m a fan of dark lipsticks, but even I have to say that wearing brown is not especially flattering: I can look tired and a bit angry in it. But I love the idea so much that I find ways to make it work for me. Maybe surprisingly, I find glossy statement lips easier to wear than matte. Also, while theoretically speaking the truer the brown, the closer to trend, a hint of something else really helps.

For exactly those reasons, Scandalous is my current favourite lip product in this colour family. I also own two plum-tinged brown lipsticks: Chanel Rouge Allure Farouche and Tom Ford Guillermo (from the Lips & Boys collection), pictured. I must admit that they are pretty similar – Guillermo a little bit more intense and matte than Farouche. Both are lovely, but despite being creamy and nice on the lips, the lack of shine makes them more challening to wear for me.

You could of course avoid all this silliness by simply wearing brown on your lids rather than lips. There are many beautiful brown eye shadows out there and I know nothing of them, because I hardly use anything on my eyes except for eyeshadow sticks (including Laura Mercier Chocolate). But I saw these gorgeous Giorgio Armani eye tints yesterday. There are at least three browns. Just saying.