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.
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!
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!
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.
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...
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 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?
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 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.
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.
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!
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.
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”.
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?
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.
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.
I feel EXACTLY the same as you. Color is life. It’s visually appealing and emotionally satisfying. And also my husband’s last name is Speed so you automatically have my attention. 🤣
Great article! I’m a huge fan of colour (although I do dabble in black and white) and I love how people respond to it. Oatmeal is for eating, not for wearing- I say this all the time! Viva pink!!
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.
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!
Brilliant Perzen! Keep bringing the colour!
Love that you've rebelled against the shame of colour and embraced it so joyfully.
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!
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... 🤔
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...
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 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?
Not just the Greek and Romans that painted their stonework; the ancient Egyptians painted entire temples in bright colours too 😊
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 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.
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.
Yes!! This is true. To kill creativity/ artistic expression/ passion
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!
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.
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”.
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?
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.
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.
I feel EXACTLY the same as you. Color is life. It’s visually appealing and emotionally satisfying. And also my husband’s last name is Speed so you automatically have my attention. 🤣
Great article! I’m a huge fan of colour (although I do dabble in black and white) and I love how people respond to it. Oatmeal is for eating, not for wearing- I say this all the time! Viva pink!!