A red printed playsuit with bell sleeves, a heathered blue polo, faded brick chino shorts, black canvas sneakers and flat tan sandals. None of it is expensive or hard to find, and that is why the pair works. One colour gets split between two people, and the blue polo picks up the blue shopfront behind them. The proportions are simple. She wears the volume on top, in those wide sleeves, and leaves the legs bare so the flat sandal carries the line.

A red polka-dot skater dress, rust suede platform sandals, a tan leather satchel worn crossbody, round wire glasses. And a Pekingese on a chain lead, which you can’t buy, but it doesn’t hurt. Midday in Sarlat, golden stone, café terraces in deep shade, and she walks straight out of the dark into full sun. The red does the rest. Why it works: every piece is simple, and none of them fight.

Three people, three coats, and between them exactly two colours that aren’t grey, navy or black. One red ribbed knit on the left, one checkerboard scarf in the middle, and a pair of light-wash jeans on the right. That’s the whole colour budget, and it’s why the group photographs as a set rather than three separate outfits. The shared move is coat length. All three sit at mid-thigh, open, worn loose over something slim.

Everything in this look is one colour and one metal. Cobalt shows up in the tank, the eyeshadow, the beaded bracelet and the mirror coating on the lenses. Silver does the rest: the stacked rings, the pearl-grey beads, the chrome manicure, the thin metal frames pushed up into the hair. It reads as loud from across the street, and it’s actually a very small shopping list. The reason it holds together is repetition, not matching.

A knit polo dress in navy and white stripes, a wide straw hat, and bare feet in the sand. That is the entire outfit, and it is doing more work than most holiday wardrobes. It covers the shoulders, it reads as a dress rather than a cover-up, and it will walk off the beach straight into a café without anyone thinking she got changed. The red band across the chest is the only loud thing in it, and it earns its place by breaking up a lot of horizontal navy.

Two versions of the same idea, walking side by side. A pastel sports bra, high-waist leggings that hit the ankle, chunky white sneakers, and almost nothing else. One keeps the leggings dark navy so the pale blue bra does all the talking. The other goes full tonal, powder blue leggings under a pink and white bra, which is the harder trick and the better one. Both look put together in a way that a plain black gym set never does, and neither of them is wearing anything complicated.

A plain black crew neck tee. High waisted light wash jeans, ripped across both knees, cuffed once at the ankle. A small black crossbody on a thin strap. A watch and a few bracelets on one wrist. That is the entire outfit, and in a square holding a couple of hundred people at dusk she is the most pulled together person in the frame. Nobody around her is wearing anything more expensive than she is.