I am not a fashion plate. And it gets worse. I not only don’t pay much attention to what I wear … I don’t pay much attention to what people around me wear, either.

But Hong Kong is making it easy for me. Especially here in the winter.

Black. That is what they wear here. Black.

Maybe some gray. Ash. And black.

Black suits for men … and women.

Black skirts with black hose. Black shoes.

Silver ties, maybe.

I read, before I got here, that the Chinese consider red a lucky color. Thus, I brought with me a red polo shirt.

Turns out that however lucky the color red may or may not be … it is not worn on the street. Not out in public. It may be luck, but not as an apparel of clothing. Maybe as a color to bet on, at roulette. Or in furniture, or something. Not as something you wear.

I did it a few times, because I don’t have an unlimited number of shirts here, and I had brought the thing over the Pacific Ocean. But I eventually just gave it up and left the red polo shirt hanging. Because, basically, I started to feel like a clown. The one guy on a train with 500 people on it … who was wearing red. As if being the big Westerner with the beard wasn’t enough to make me stand out.

Hong Kong isn’t exactly a palette of sartorial hues even in the summer. Though not all of the T-shirts, back then, were black. Some white.  And a lot sneakers, some of them white. Though the kids seem to prefer black Converse.

The fashion statement this winter is boots. For women. Knee-high, ankle-high, ruffs at the top. Low heels, high heels. Most of them leather. A few of them some sort of heavy fabric.

But nearly all of them black. No matter their style or the material from which they are made.

So, the average guy? If he’s a male under 30, he’s wearing pre-stressed jeans with tennis shoes and a black sweatshirt. If he’s over 30, he’s probably wearing a suit. Black.

If it’s a woman under 40, she is wearing a black skirt, knee-length, over black boots, with a black top and a black overcoat — if the temperature has dived all the way to, oh, 60 degrees. If she is older than 40, she’s probably wearing much the same, but the chances of a woman wearing loose-fitting pants (generally black) and perhaps a vest (uh, black) go up sharply if she is older.

I was talking about the black-black-black thing, and someone said, “Hey, it’s like any other big city.” And I suppose that is true. Paris is an all-black town. I suppose New York is. San Francisco.  Seattle, for sure. Maybe Los Angeles, less so. But, yes, black is a big-city color.  The big-city color.

The one big exception here to any-color-as-long-as-it’s-black seems to apply to Indian women who choose to dress in a traditional style.

Those Indian women are like a rainbow in a monochromatic world. Bright reds, yellows, purples. Billowing saris coming down the street.  A pleasure to see.

But everyone else? They’re wearing black. Unless one of them is a dope from California who read that red is a lucky color and didn’t realize they were talking about flowers.