There is a particular quality to the September wardrobe that no other month in the Indian fashion calendar quite replicates. It is not the full commitment of the festive season, which arrives properly in October with its lehengas and its occasion pressure and its requirement to be visibly, deliberately dressed. It is not the survival dressing of August, which asks only that you emerge from a downpour looking like you intended to. September is the transition month, and the people who dress with most intelligence are the ones who understand transitions best.

The fashion crowd, whose professional relationship with clothes gives them both more opinions and more permission than most, enters September with a very specific set of moves. The wardrobe is being reorganised. The festive pieces are arriving from tailors and ateliers. The occasion shoes are being broken in before they are needed. And in the in-between, the daily dressing is doing something more considered and more interesting than the months on either side of it allow.

Here is what they are reaching for