All Shades Purple Make a Regal Splash This Winter

Long associated with royalty and nobility, purple reigns this fall.

Edgy and soft, feminine and modern, the hue, in all its variations, is tied to the 1980s (Prince, anyone?), and designers are tapping into that nostalgia with a vengeance.

Think eggplant, lavender, aubergine, heliotrope, orchid, plum and violet -- if it falls anywhere on the color wheel between red and blue, it's hot.

"Purple is just a really easy color for most to wear," says Whitney Avishar, 31, owner of the Pink Hanger boutique in Charlotte, N.C. "It's classic, easy to incorporate into your wardrobe. It looks great with black, silver and gold."

Marc Jacobs liberally sprinkled his Fall 2009 collection with electric-purple ponchos, gloves and booties, metallic-plum cocktail dresses and violet acid-washed denim. It found its way to the runway at Marc by Marc Jacobs, too, in the form of opaque purple tights and multicolor prints.

At Avishar's Pink Hanger boutique, Trina Turk dresses with purples are popular, she says, like a drapey, strapless periwinkle dress with a gold chain detail ($321).

A Three Dots cotton, ruched dress ($135) is hard to keep in stock, as is an eggplant-colored cowl-neck top ($65).

Shoppers may not come in looking for purple, but they "gravitate to it," Avishar says. "It's a flattering tone, and when you're moving from summer glow to winter white, purple is something that looks good on your skin." And purples flatter, too, if your skin tone ranges from olive to ebony.

Add a bit of instant chic to your existing wardrobe by working in purple accessories and pairing with black or gray.

Try a printed scarf with purple in it, or a statement necklace, playing off the complementary properties of purple and metallics.