As a migrant from India, I was always ashamed of my colourful clothes as a teen in India. What looked “simple” in colorful, glittery India felt out of place and shocking in NZ where most people wore white, black, blue or gray. Few years ago I decided that I actually loved colour and I had enough of the code switching. My style du jour is now colour blocking. Pink on red. Orange leggings and a green shirt. Yellow top with purple pants. And I now get stopped regularly for brightening up the office
This really speaks to me, particularly at the office. I’ve moved into a leadership role and it was recommended I don’t wear “distracting” bright colors at big presentations. Why? Because we can’t trust other adults to focus on my words when I’m wearing red pants? It truly boggled my mind when they said that, and I’m proud that I have stayed true to my colorful self. Good for us!
I'm curious who told you to wear drab colours when presenting. Men, women, bosses? It goes against everything I've been taught about engaging with people in face to face presentations. Be bright and bold.
This doesn’t surprise me because so many women in the workplace are driven by insecurity and fear to conform even more intensely at work than we ever did even in middle school. It’s also so incredibly subjective what “professional” dress is, it makes for a situation where managers and peers are more likely to respond negatively to something *just because* it stands out, not recognizing that the feeling they’re having isn’t a lack of professional thoughtfulness, but a fear of what they would feel standing out like that and feeling vulnerable. A fear of allowing their comfort and creativity out of that tightly shut box they keep it in at work, because they have been punished for that in tiny and huge ways all their life - especially women.
As a fellow Kiwi with a love of colour, can I say thank you for your contribution to breaking the *chokehold* that black and navy clothes have on this country!
When I read this article, my first thought was India! It's always so colorful when I visit there, and I occasionally see fragments of Indian color in the U.S.; an embroidered notebook cover, a silk scarf, a thickly knit winter cap.
I was going to site the same example. being in India you see prints more than colours really shine among the masses. Big floral prints have always stood there days in this subcontinent. Right from bedsheets to saris you will never get enough. whereas, the airport look celebrities of Bombay and their AD shows of their lavish spaces will often embrace the more block colours, by which I mean a single shade if not the muted.
Cannot tell you how much I love this, for you and for everyone who gets to now enjoy your color moods. India - via the 90s cinema obsession with it - is what introduced me to color as a kid and I never looked back. I so deeply admire your country's culture of color (among many other things!) and I adore knowing you're choosing your preferred style. I can only hope it encourages others!
Re: “bright colours on the other hand, can make us feel more comfortable, energetic and engaged.” With that in mind, notice how colorful your phone's screen is as compared to the rest of your environment.
I have a theory that this color-drain phenomenon tracks with our skyrocketing daily screen time. It'd make sense that, if the virtual environment in which you spend most of your waking hours is a screen, you might care less about your real-life surroundings being colorful; alternately, you might subconsciously prefer neutrals at home to offset some of the overstimulation brought on by your average day at the office. I'm not sure which way the causation would run, but I'm sure there's something to it...
Ohhh.. This is interesting. I have a black-and-white photo and all grayscale icons on my phone, but my home is filled with colorful art and plants and books. Maybe I unintentionally did a nice thing for myself!?
I don't think so. It's popular now to blame the Internet and our cell phones but I think that it's a reflection of the propaganda that the citizens of the West have to struggle with.
We are being drowned in a sea of drab colors. The usual flying monkeys, such as culture magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens, and paint companies such as Valspar and Benjamin Moore, are telling us that the "most popular" colors are the most bland.
I believe that this is a prelude to getting the population to the level that was described in the novel 1984.
Yes that makes sense I barely decorated my apartment for several years strange considering how much I love decorating but it's definitely because my brother & I were on our screens too much.
I appreciate this hypothesis. I think so, so much of our human experience is influenced by our relationship w/tech and was curious about this relationship while reading this article (and the author touched on it). I think there's something significant to what you're saying. 🙏🏼
Thanks for your comment! It inspired me to re-read this piece – it had been a while, as my original comment dates back to July.
Looking at the graphic at the top of the article again, a few other things jump out at me, which is having me reconsider my comment on phones to some extent (though I still stand by my comments).
Namely: Certain obvious downward trends start/unfold well before the mid-aughts and the arrival of the smartphone. One observes a noticeable decline around 1840 (a passing fad, possibly), but then a very long-term trend forms from 1880 onward. Later, we see an abnormally rapid color-drain phenomenon starting in 1980.
Another remarkable long-term trend is the increasing presence of cooler tones starting in 1960. Interestingly, we see color getting radically squeezed out on this graphic, but not equally across the spectrum. Warmer tones are eliminated as neutrals AND cooler tones come to dominate the landscape.
I might still be tempted to blame screens more generally, though they nonetheless couldn't be the hidden hand at play from 1880 onward. According to a quick Google search, color TVs started outselling black and white sets in the early '70s, and arcades became popular in the '70s and '80s. Perhaps new technologies have been diverting our attention via process addiction more broadly for a whole half-century now – and I'd still theorize that that must influence the palettes we live in.
As you have considered it so well, and analytically, I have to comment that I wondered whether any of the reduction in colour usage can also be attributed to cost and availability. Of the raw materials, etc. I don't know, it's just been troubling me that this was not touched on in any way by the author of the piece. Great article for him though!
Thanks for your comment! That's a really great point. Recent trends (1980-) have seen a reduction in colors that incorporate red, more specifically, so there may well be something to it – cost and availability of specific pigments. I'm sure the author would have some interesting comments about that, with his trademark style featuring copious amounts of that lovely bright pink.
I just did a very quick Google image search to look at the overall presence of color by car brands, theorizing that budget brands might offer more models in drab (white, grey, black, beige, powder blue, e.g.) colors than luxury brands; this seems to bear out to some degree. This wasn't a proper analysis by any stretch, but color does seem to track with list price.
If you're right, that's kind of depressing to contemplate – the notion that there may be less color in the world because most people simply can't afford it as they once could. It seems that the Western middle class has been on a steady decline for decades, and it'd be logical that manufacturers would strive to keep up with demand for ever-cheaper vehicles.
Then again, we can often manage to afford the things we truly VALUE, which again leads me to wonder if we're mainly caving to the downward pressure exerted on color by other factors and macro trends.
Circling back to my original theory (around our ubiquitous, attention-grabbing screens) with your comment in mind, it occurs to me that, while pigments for the real world (paint, e.g.) might be less accessible to the masses as time marches on, the cost of pixels will forever be the same across the spectrum. Incidentally, the internet is a very colorful place... perhaps because it can be, at no extra cost to its creators or users?
So many questions!! I'm really enjoying this thread. Best! :)
Yes, and just to say I agreed with your original theory about the colour on our bright phones and screens ...definitely a factor, maybe we are choosing a muted palette everywhere else as we're overstimulated by this thing that's now an extension of our hand!! 🤯 Best to you too ☺️
Right on. Some off-the-cuff thoughts: late 1800s onward = growth and maturity of the Industrial revolution. So maybe not just solely screens, but Tech more broadly.
1980s onward = proliferation of personal computing and digital Tech.
Also, color psychology. Warm tones are often associated with warmth, energy, emotions, joy, love. Cool tones are often associated with the mental sphere, authority, tranquility. I'm now curious about intentional and unintentional color choices based on broader psychological trends, probably influenced by technology. Thanks for your insight!
This is so deeply true. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the largest number of adversarial conversations I have had during my life was about color. Am I really going to wear THAT combination, do I really think THOSE go together, isn't THAT a bit much, on and on and on. I spent well over two years looking for a heavy warm winter jacket to hold me through Canadian winters that wasn't black. 90% of them are black. 'Oh well the dirt doesn't show as much!' I'll wash it! I can't spend all winter in a black body bag, it's hard enough as it is! Finally I found a yellow one with flowers and my god, the number of random conversations I have with strangers over that jacket. Like..... every time I go out with it, two or three at least! And they're usually wearing black ones. And saying how happy my yellow one made them, just to walk past. I'm always like yeah I know, right? It's a life saver! Fight the color reduction, people. Fight it. Gray is boring AF.
Yes! I recently got rid of all black clothing in my wardrobe and it is so much more joyful to get dressed now…here in Ireland in winter especially everyone is wearing black and grey 🙈
Absolutely. The comment I get most often about my clothes is ‘wow that looks so joyful!!’ always followed by ‘….I mean I could NEVER wear it, but I really love it on you!!’ 😅 It’s a weird not-quite-compliment but I definitely dress for my feelings.
Interesting article, good read. I study trends as well and my conclusion to all of the monochrome culture at the moment is that people are constantly in front of screens like never before and so color in real life needs to be monochrome to relax and calm us neurologically. Mental hospitals are white and padded for a reason - to help patients and to protect them. We look at interiors at the moment and everything is monochrome and curvy and tactile for similar reasons - we are all over stimulated from 5-16 hours a DAY of screen use. I am not a doctor but common sense and my observation of trends tells me this is why people are going for minimalist lifestyle, organized lifestyle, and beige lifestyle.
I’m no fan of Macdonalds, but even I was shocked when I recently saw photos of the contrast from its buoyant 80s interiors to its present day bleak, black soullessness.
People say “Well it’s because Macdonalds is no longer marketing to kids” - as if adults want to dine in some sort of dystopian dining hall?
There’s a sort of violence in these new interiors, an unconscious contempt directed towards customers. It’s like they’re saying “You must eat your meal in bleak utilitarianism as you deserve nothing more”.
Statues on medieval churches in Europe were all painted in bright colors. The church stained-glass windows were brilliantly colored. We just see them now covered in grime and eroded by time.
I grew up in the 1960s and 70s, when clothes and decor were bright, psychedelic and colorful. Everything has become monochrome
Some of the temples still have bits of the original paintwork remaining, such as Karnak, which is amazing, considering they've been there for thousands of years. Edfu is an awesome temple to visit! :)
I'm guilty! I'm admitting here and now that I don't like colours. Or, let me re-phrase that: I don't like too many colours in one place. For me, this has been the case since early age (and I'm in my fifties now). I'm often wearing black, my car is black, my motorbike is black. I often thought about the 'why'. To me, it is that I'm an introvert. I like to be alone and I need the calm. If I'm in a surrounding with too much colours, I'm overwhelmed easily. Your post made me think... I wasn't aware that we're loosing colour in general. To me, there's still too much colour in the world (not in nature though... there I love the colour). Could it be that with all the new technologies and our world always moving faster, the net bombarding us with more information that we can deal with, that our brains just need some calm? And therefore try to avoid the noise i.e. colour?
To be honest, I don't look good in bright colors. I have very white skin and dark hair. When I wear a bright color it makes me look super white. There are some colors like blue or red I can wear but overall I can't just put on an orange or yellow shirt without blinding people lol.
It's globalism. Why does everything have to become about misogyny and race baiting? Globalists want everything grey and cheap, easily reproduced and palatable to the masses. And no, it's not capitalism. Small businesses offer colorful, unique items with many flourishes. It's big businesses, big corps, everyone who wants to turn people into little cogs in their machines. Ugly, beige and boring is demoralizing. Beautiful environs feed the soul. Everything about our society is designed kill the soul.
I'd strongly connect with class & the tastes of elites. Elites used to use lots of color & complex design as conspicuous consumption but after color became easier to access they changed to boring colors to distinguish. But capitalism is interrelated with white supremacy & patriarchy
Love this. I came across the term “maximalism” and felt like I’d found the word for my style! I love color! I also hate that pink has been so denigrated. I’ve felt that intuitively but have never learned anything about it! It’s such a beautiful color.
This was really interesting. I love color. I drive a bright red car. I have a highlighter yellow winter jacket that I love, my old one was safety orange (I bought that one with my husband when we were dating and he kept suggesting the navy one. Ha! ). Every room in my house is painted a different color and I’m known among my friends as someone with real color sense whatever that means. I’ve heard the comments. “I could never wear that” “but you can carry that off.” I’ve gotten funny looks even. But it’s what makes me happy.
I agree with your thesis, but you get into murky contradictions when you attempt to racialize the phenomenon. You claim it is about ‘whiteness’ and ‘othering’, but include black in your category of colour denial. Why not ‘blackness’ as in the whole ‘black is beautiful’ promotion of racial pride? I don’t think you need that angle at all to make the case. In other words, it is a stretch.
Hear hear to everything you’ve said. Once, a few miles outside the walls of Siena, I entered another walled city: a city of self-sown trees and brambles growing overthe picturesque remains of a nineteenth-century park designed by Agostino Fantastici, now left to crumble. This garden, the secret garden that everyone dreams of finding, was marked by a rusty old gate that was easily pushed aside. I could just pick out the forms that shaped the garden and the routes around it; glades and grottoes were discernible by the shades and layers, and as I looked more closely, I realised that the greens and greys and browns were speckled with yellows and oranges, reds and pinks. But these weren’t coming from flowers: they were the result of light and shadows as they played on different surfaces.
Moods changed from gentle to brooding as I explored further, moving from bright glades into darker areas;
the atmosphere was sometimes still, sometimes full of a sense of what had gone before as leaves started to rustle and their colours flickered. What had clearly once been tamed lawns in one shade of emerald were now wild, in thousand shades and hues of green. I wondered to myself, is it just colour which creates atmosphere? Or is it so tied up with other elements—location, light, climate, one’s own cultural references—that one person’s romantic is another person’s tepid bore?
Colour is as much about perception and position as
it is about light, whether in gardens or painting… we need colour!
we really do need more "useless beauty". Albany NY is a great example, it is a fairly large city surrounded by beautiful landscape on the Hudson and yet the skyline is cement blocks. who in their right mind approved that?
Love this, hope it goes wide. As a color obsessive who regularly dons those rods-and-cones burning dresses from the 60s, I feel out of place in this moment in time not because I'm a neon billboard walking around, but because I do not understand those who are also not joyously obsessed with color. What is happening?! It feels like true insanity to be this all-in on neutrals. Or, at least, it's driving me insane.
Thank you for this reminder. Last summer, I looked at my closet and could have sworn I turned into an Italian widow and forgot to tell myself there was so much black in my closet. I've been slowly working on bringing more color back into my life and this just reinforces that desire. Give me all the rebellion and expression.
I couldn’t agree more. I’ve been house hunting recently and was shocked to see how almost all new houses (and a lot of done up older ones) are kitted out in monotones of grey and white: grey carpets, grey tiles, grey or white kitchens… It’s all so DULL. And lifeless.
It’s called “buy me beige” where I live. Houses on the market always have these colors. A realtor told me it’s be wise they want people to be able to envision their own style overlaid onto it and seeing to much “character” is considered off putting because it’s the style of the seller and could disrupt the seller envisioning their own style” also boring colors signal being “transitory” not completely settled or comfortable in one place.
The grey is sooo ugly. I walked down a street full of cute colorful old houses and the new one had that ugly millennial grey with black windows and straight edge look. I visited a basic house too and the grey and white all over was so bleak and they kept boasting about all of the remodeling and design they did and I just faked a smile
As a migrant from India, I was always ashamed of my colourful clothes as a teen in India. What looked “simple” in colorful, glittery India felt out of place and shocking in NZ where most people wore white, black, blue or gray. Few years ago I decided that I actually loved colour and I had enough of the code switching. My style du jour is now colour blocking. Pink on red. Orange leggings and a green shirt. Yellow top with purple pants. And I now get stopped regularly for brightening up the office
This really speaks to me, particularly at the office. I’ve moved into a leadership role and it was recommended I don’t wear “distracting” bright colors at big presentations. Why? Because we can’t trust other adults to focus on my words when I’m wearing red pants? It truly boggled my mind when they said that, and I’m proud that I have stayed true to my colorful self. Good for us!
I'm curious who told you to wear drab colours when presenting. Men, women, bosses? It goes against everything I've been taught about engaging with people in face to face presentations. Be bright and bold.
My female boss! And yes, I couldn’t agree more with bright and bold.
This doesn’t surprise me because so many women in the workplace are driven by insecurity and fear to conform even more intensely at work than we ever did even in middle school. It’s also so incredibly subjective what “professional” dress is, it makes for a situation where managers and peers are more likely to respond negatively to something *just because* it stands out, not recognizing that the feeling they’re having isn’t a lack of professional thoughtfulness, but a fear of what they would feel standing out like that and feeling vulnerable. A fear of allowing their comfort and creativity out of that tightly shut box they keep it in at work, because they have been punished for that in tiny and huge ways all their life - especially women.
Where do people even get these ideas?
How odd.
100%
As a fellow Kiwi with a love of colour, can I say thank you for your contribution to breaking the *chokehold* that black and navy clothes have on this country!
Yes!
Love that you've rebelled against the shame of colour and embraced it so joyfully.
Brilliant Perzen! Keep bringing the colour!
When I read this article, my first thought was India! It's always so colorful when I visit there, and I occasionally see fragments of Indian color in the U.S.; an embroidered notebook cover, a silk scarf, a thickly knit winter cap.
I was going to site the same example. being in India you see prints more than colours really shine among the masses. Big floral prints have always stood there days in this subcontinent. Right from bedsheets to saris you will never get enough. whereas, the airport look celebrities of Bombay and their AD shows of their lavish spaces will often embrace the more block colours, by which I mean a single shade if not the muted.
Cannot tell you how much I love this, for you and for everyone who gets to now enjoy your color moods. India - via the 90s cinema obsession with it - is what introduced me to color as a kid and I never looked back. I so deeply admire your country's culture of color (among many other things!) and I adore knowing you're choosing your preferred style. I can only hope it encourages others!
omg yes! South-asians are often described as “tacky” or “cheap” for wearing colour & prints!
Re: “bright colours on the other hand, can make us feel more comfortable, energetic and engaged.” With that in mind, notice how colorful your phone's screen is as compared to the rest of your environment.
I have a theory that this color-drain phenomenon tracks with our skyrocketing daily screen time. It'd make sense that, if the virtual environment in which you spend most of your waking hours is a screen, you might care less about your real-life surroundings being colorful; alternately, you might subconsciously prefer neutrals at home to offset some of the overstimulation brought on by your average day at the office. I'm not sure which way the causation would run, but I'm sure there's something to it...
Ohhh.. This is interesting. I have a black-and-white photo and all grayscale icons on my phone, but my home is filled with colorful art and plants and books. Maybe I unintentionally did a nice thing for myself!?
Sure sounds like it! 🙂
I don't think so. It's popular now to blame the Internet and our cell phones but I think that it's a reflection of the propaganda that the citizens of the West have to struggle with.
We are being drowned in a sea of drab colors. The usual flying monkeys, such as culture magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens, and paint companies such as Valspar and Benjamin Moore, are telling us that the "most popular" colors are the most bland.
I believe that this is a prelude to getting the population to the level that was described in the novel 1984.
Yes that makes sense I barely decorated my apartment for several years strange considering how much I love decorating but it's definitely because my brother & I were on our screens too much.
I appreciate this hypothesis. I think so, so much of our human experience is influenced by our relationship w/tech and was curious about this relationship while reading this article (and the author touched on it). I think there's something significant to what you're saying. 🙏🏼
Thanks for your comment! It inspired me to re-read this piece – it had been a while, as my original comment dates back to July.
Looking at the graphic at the top of the article again, a few other things jump out at me, which is having me reconsider my comment on phones to some extent (though I still stand by my comments).
Namely: Certain obvious downward trends start/unfold well before the mid-aughts and the arrival of the smartphone. One observes a noticeable decline around 1840 (a passing fad, possibly), but then a very long-term trend forms from 1880 onward. Later, we see an abnormally rapid color-drain phenomenon starting in 1980.
Another remarkable long-term trend is the increasing presence of cooler tones starting in 1960. Interestingly, we see color getting radically squeezed out on this graphic, but not equally across the spectrum. Warmer tones are eliminated as neutrals AND cooler tones come to dominate the landscape.
I might still be tempted to blame screens more generally, though they nonetheless couldn't be the hidden hand at play from 1880 onward. According to a quick Google search, color TVs started outselling black and white sets in the early '70s, and arcades became popular in the '70s and '80s. Perhaps new technologies have been diverting our attention via process addiction more broadly for a whole half-century now – and I'd still theorize that that must influence the palettes we live in.
As you have considered it so well, and analytically, I have to comment that I wondered whether any of the reduction in colour usage can also be attributed to cost and availability. Of the raw materials, etc. I don't know, it's just been troubling me that this was not touched on in any way by the author of the piece. Great article for him though!
Thanks for your comment! That's a really great point. Recent trends (1980-) have seen a reduction in colors that incorporate red, more specifically, so there may well be something to it – cost and availability of specific pigments. I'm sure the author would have some interesting comments about that, with his trademark style featuring copious amounts of that lovely bright pink.
I just did a very quick Google image search to look at the overall presence of color by car brands, theorizing that budget brands might offer more models in drab (white, grey, black, beige, powder blue, e.g.) colors than luxury brands; this seems to bear out to some degree. This wasn't a proper analysis by any stretch, but color does seem to track with list price.
If you're right, that's kind of depressing to contemplate – the notion that there may be less color in the world because most people simply can't afford it as they once could. It seems that the Western middle class has been on a steady decline for decades, and it'd be logical that manufacturers would strive to keep up with demand for ever-cheaper vehicles.
Then again, we can often manage to afford the things we truly VALUE, which again leads me to wonder if we're mainly caving to the downward pressure exerted on color by other factors and macro trends.
Circling back to my original theory (around our ubiquitous, attention-grabbing screens) with your comment in mind, it occurs to me that, while pigments for the real world (paint, e.g.) might be less accessible to the masses as time marches on, the cost of pixels will forever be the same across the spectrum. Incidentally, the internet is a very colorful place... perhaps because it can be, at no extra cost to its creators or users?
So many questions!! I'm really enjoying this thread. Best! :)
Yes, and just to say I agreed with your original theory about the colour on our bright phones and screens ...definitely a factor, maybe we are choosing a muted palette everywhere else as we're overstimulated by this thing that's now an extension of our hand!! 🤯 Best to you too ☺️
Right on. Some off-the-cuff thoughts: late 1800s onward = growth and maturity of the Industrial revolution. So maybe not just solely screens, but Tech more broadly.
1980s onward = proliferation of personal computing and digital Tech.
Also, color psychology. Warm tones are often associated with warmth, energy, emotions, joy, love. Cool tones are often associated with the mental sphere, authority, tranquility. I'm now curious about intentional and unintentional color choices based on broader psychological trends, probably influenced by technology. Thanks for your insight!
Yes! Interesting. Thank you! :)
This is so deeply true. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the largest number of adversarial conversations I have had during my life was about color. Am I really going to wear THAT combination, do I really think THOSE go together, isn't THAT a bit much, on and on and on. I spent well over two years looking for a heavy warm winter jacket to hold me through Canadian winters that wasn't black. 90% of them are black. 'Oh well the dirt doesn't show as much!' I'll wash it! I can't spend all winter in a black body bag, it's hard enough as it is! Finally I found a yellow one with flowers and my god, the number of random conversations I have with strangers over that jacket. Like..... every time I go out with it, two or three at least! And they're usually wearing black ones. And saying how happy my yellow one made them, just to walk past. I'm always like yeah I know, right? It's a life saver! Fight the color reduction, people. Fight it. Gray is boring AF.
Yes! I recently got rid of all black clothing in my wardrobe and it is so much more joyful to get dressed now…here in Ireland in winter especially everyone is wearing black and grey 🙈
Absolutely. The comment I get most often about my clothes is ‘wow that looks so joyful!!’ always followed by ‘….I mean I could NEVER wear it, but I really love it on you!!’ 😅 It’s a weird not-quite-compliment but I definitely dress for my feelings.
Interesting... 🤔
My dark purple jacket in a sea of black seems loud and it’s dark purple!
Interesting article, good read. I study trends as well and my conclusion to all of the monochrome culture at the moment is that people are constantly in front of screens like never before and so color in real life needs to be monochrome to relax and calm us neurologically. Mental hospitals are white and padded for a reason - to help patients and to protect them. We look at interiors at the moment and everything is monochrome and curvy and tactile for similar reasons - we are all over stimulated from 5-16 hours a DAY of screen use. I am not a doctor but common sense and my observation of trends tells me this is why people are going for minimalist lifestyle, organized lifestyle, and beige lifestyle.
Mental hospitals are not white or padded.
I disagree. It's popular to blame the Internet for everything but I think it's political.
I’m no fan of Macdonalds, but even I was shocked when I recently saw photos of the contrast from its buoyant 80s interiors to its present day bleak, black soullessness.
People say “Well it’s because Macdonalds is no longer marketing to kids” - as if adults want to dine in some sort of dystopian dining hall?
There’s a sort of violence in these new interiors, an unconscious contempt directed towards customers. It’s like they’re saying “You must eat your meal in bleak utilitarianism as you deserve nothing more”.
Not just the Greek and Romans that painted their stonework; the ancient Egyptians painted entire temples in bright colours too 😊
Statues on medieval churches in Europe were all painted in bright colors. The church stained-glass windows were brilliantly colored. We just see them now covered in grime and eroded by time.
I grew up in the 1960s and 70s, when clothes and decor were bright, psychedelic and colorful. Everything has become monochrome
Yes went to one called Edfu which has been restored-bright parrot colours.
Some of the temples still have bits of the original paintwork remaining, such as Karnak, which is amazing, considering they've been there for thousands of years. Edfu is an awesome temple to visit! :)
yes it really is something and also my favourite Philae which had incredible colours preserved by silt. Isn't Egypt glorious!
Absolutely! 🙌
I'm guilty! I'm admitting here and now that I don't like colours. Or, let me re-phrase that: I don't like too many colours in one place. For me, this has been the case since early age (and I'm in my fifties now). I'm often wearing black, my car is black, my motorbike is black. I often thought about the 'why'. To me, it is that I'm an introvert. I like to be alone and I need the calm. If I'm in a surrounding with too much colours, I'm overwhelmed easily. Your post made me think... I wasn't aware that we're loosing colour in general. To me, there's still too much colour in the world (not in nature though... there I love the colour). Could it be that with all the new technologies and our world always moving faster, the net bombarding us with more information that we can deal with, that our brains just need some calm? And therefore try to avoid the noise i.e. colour?
To be honest, I don't look good in bright colors. I have very white skin and dark hair. When I wear a bright color it makes me look super white. There are some colors like blue or red I can wear but overall I can't just put on an orange or yellow shirt without blinding people lol.
It's globalism. Why does everything have to become about misogyny and race baiting? Globalists want everything grey and cheap, easily reproduced and palatable to the masses. And no, it's not capitalism. Small businesses offer colorful, unique items with many flourishes. It's big businesses, big corps, everyone who wants to turn people into little cogs in their machines. Ugly, beige and boring is demoralizing. Beautiful environs feed the soul. Everything about our society is designed kill the soul.
I'd strongly connect with class & the tastes of elites. Elites used to use lots of color & complex design as conspicuous consumption but after color became easier to access they changed to boring colors to distinguish. But capitalism is interrelated with white supremacy & patriarchy
Love this. I came across the term “maximalism” and felt like I’d found the word for my style! I love color! I also hate that pink has been so denigrated. I’ve felt that intuitively but have never learned anything about it! It’s such a beautiful color.
This was really interesting. I love color. I drive a bright red car. I have a highlighter yellow winter jacket that I love, my old one was safety orange (I bought that one with my husband when we were dating and he kept suggesting the navy one. Ha! ). Every room in my house is painted a different color and I’m known among my friends as someone with real color sense whatever that means. I’ve heard the comments. “I could never wear that” “but you can carry that off.” I’ve gotten funny looks even. But it’s what makes me happy.
I agree with your thesis, but you get into murky contradictions when you attempt to racialize the phenomenon. You claim it is about ‘whiteness’ and ‘othering’, but include black in your category of colour denial. Why not ‘blackness’ as in the whole ‘black is beautiful’ promotion of racial pride? I don’t think you need that angle at all to make the case. In other words, it is a stretch.
Hear hear to everything you’ve said. Once, a few miles outside the walls of Siena, I entered another walled city: a city of self-sown trees and brambles growing overthe picturesque remains of a nineteenth-century park designed by Agostino Fantastici, now left to crumble. This garden, the secret garden that everyone dreams of finding, was marked by a rusty old gate that was easily pushed aside. I could just pick out the forms that shaped the garden and the routes around it; glades and grottoes were discernible by the shades and layers, and as I looked more closely, I realised that the greens and greys and browns were speckled with yellows and oranges, reds and pinks. But these weren’t coming from flowers: they were the result of light and shadows as they played on different surfaces.
Moods changed from gentle to brooding as I explored further, moving from bright glades into darker areas;
the atmosphere was sometimes still, sometimes full of a sense of what had gone before as leaves started to rustle and their colours flickered. What had clearly once been tamed lawns in one shade of emerald were now wild, in thousand shades and hues of green. I wondered to myself, is it just colour which creates atmosphere? Or is it so tied up with other elements—location, light, climate, one’s own cultural references—that one person’s romantic is another person’s tepid bore?
Colour is as much about perception and position as
it is about light, whether in gardens or painting… we need colour!
we really do need more "useless beauty". Albany NY is a great example, it is a fairly large city surrounded by beautiful landscape on the Hudson and yet the skyline is cement blocks. who in their right mind approved that?
Love this, hope it goes wide. As a color obsessive who regularly dons those rods-and-cones burning dresses from the 60s, I feel out of place in this moment in time not because I'm a neon billboard walking around, but because I do not understand those who are also not joyously obsessed with color. What is happening?! It feels like true insanity to be this all-in on neutrals. Or, at least, it's driving me insane.
Thank you for this reminder. Last summer, I looked at my closet and could have sworn I turned into an Italian widow and forgot to tell myself there was so much black in my closet. I've been slowly working on bringing more color back into my life and this just reinforces that desire. Give me all the rebellion and expression.
I couldn’t agree more. I’ve been house hunting recently and was shocked to see how almost all new houses (and a lot of done up older ones) are kitted out in monotones of grey and white: grey carpets, grey tiles, grey or white kitchens… It’s all so DULL. And lifeless.
It’s called “buy me beige” where I live. Houses on the market always have these colors. A realtor told me it’s be wise they want people to be able to envision their own style overlaid onto it and seeing to much “character” is considered off putting because it’s the style of the seller and could disrupt the seller envisioning their own style” also boring colors signal being “transitory” not completely settled or comfortable in one place.
The grey is sooo ugly. I walked down a street full of cute colorful old houses and the new one had that ugly millennial grey with black windows and straight edge look. I visited a basic house too and the grey and white all over was so bleak and they kept boasting about all of the remodeling and design they did and I just faked a smile