Meanwhile at London’s Barbican, some new blue looks courtesy of Balenciaga, Junya Watanabe and others.

Paris, summer 2014. Fashion week is in full flow. On Wednesday, Valentino sends models down the runway dressed in suits of embroidered, steel-blue silk. On Thursday, Issey Miyake goes big on blue, inspired by creative director Mr Yusuke Takahashi’s love of Palau, a tiny Pacific island state ringed by azure waters. On Friday, Junya Watanabe revives the traditional Japanese patchwork art of boro, showcasing an intricate collection stitched together out of scraps of old indigo and denim. The weekend brings yet more designers. Lanvin, AMI, Sacai: none seem capable of resisting the allure of azure.

By now, of course, this is only confirming what we’ve already witnessed in London, where Burberry Prorsum showed inky dégradé-blue knitwear and double-breasted suits in vivid ultramarine, and Milan, where Ms Frida Giannini themed her final menswear show for Gucci around the Navy (and around the colour, navy). Blue, it seems, is set to be the story of the season.

Fast-forward to spring 2015, and – well, you can judge for yourself. These shots, taken at London’s Barbican Centre on a blue-sky day in March, reflect only a fraction of what’s available to wear right now: a veritable banquet of tailoring, casualwear and workwear-inspired options, all laid on by some of the world’s most exciting menswear designers.

“It was really everywhere at the shows,” says Mr Dan May, Style Director of MR PORTER, who attended the London, Paris and Milan fashion weeks. “And it wasn’t confined to one particular style. Heritage brands embraced it just as readily as the more fashion-forward ones.” Meanwhile, it was the range of hues that caught the eye of Mr John Brodie, MR PORTER’s Editor-in-Chief. “There wasn’t just the usual navy blue on the runways, but a bright indigo which seems like the perfect shade to wear on a summer’s day,” he says. “And that applies whether you’re the type who likes a Boglioli travel suit, or one who goes for a Junya Watanabe pork pie hat.”

But what, we hear you ask, does this sudden abundance of blue actually mean? Is it relevant at all? Ms Diana Vreeland, the legendary Vogue editor and grande dame of the Swinging Sixties, would certainly have said so – but then she was more sensitive than most to the power of style as a cultural bellwether. “You can… see the approaching revolution in clothes,” she once said. She’s right: the way we choose to dress is often a reflection of the way we’d like to live our lives. It’s hard to look back at the urban lumberjack look of a few years ago, for instance, and not see in those sturdy boots, flannel shirts and untamed beards a yearning for a simpler time when work meant digging out a foundation rather than digging out one’s inbox.

The same could be said of blue, of course, which has workwear connotations of its own. The phrase “blue-collar” refers to the traditional colour of a factory worker’s overalls, and it’s not unreasonable to think that the enduring popularity of indigo utility jackets – of the sort worn by the New York Times street-style photographer, Mr Bill Cunningham – has something to do with all desk jockeys who pass our days fantasising about the romance of a good, honest day’s work.

Maybe – but we think the reality is far less complicated than all that. There’s no incipient Luddite revolt behind our blue fixation – just a simple desire for peace and tranquillity. Blue’s the colour of the sea and the sky. It’s an inherently relaxing, happiness-inducing colour.

But, look. Let’s not get carried away. We’re not about to declare blue the new black here. You’re an intelligent bunch, and we know that a statement like that is unlikely to ping too loudly on your relevance radar. This isn’t really about trends; in the end, it’s just about good clothes – and that’s something we can all get on board with. Regardless of whether you follow trends, it’s hard to deny that there has never been a better time to invest in the blue stuff.