Just as you can go decades without running into anyone under the age of 80 named Jacob, only to get gob-smacked with Jacob as the number one boy’s name. Just as you can never have heard of chopped salad, chicken Caesar, or focaccia until it’s on every damned menu. Just as you all of a sudden – OMG – realize that everyone is speaking in TXT. So, apparently the designers of the world are simultaneously visited by an emissary of the great fashion beyond to let them know what color is in. (That or they collude.)
So we find ourselves hearing that pink is the new neutral, or red is the new black, or pastel is the new power color.
And, this time around, the tablets handed down to the fashion mavens have it writ large that, come this spring, orange is the “it” color. (Source: Wall Street Journal.)
Apparently they didn’t get the message that bright orange doesn’t look good on an awful lot of people. Or maybe this is just one more sign that the American Century – peopled by all those whey-faced, pale-eyed offspring of British Isle and Northern Europe stock – has drawn to an abrupt and irrevocable close. It’s someone else’s turn to look good.
Of course, even us whey-faced, pale-eyed yesteryear lookers could get away with an orange watch, those spi
kes, or – better and more comfortably yet - those Nikes. A bangle bracelet. A shopping bag. But for anything up close and personal, like next to the face, navel-orange orange is going to make an awful lot of people look awful. Even my sister Kath, of the autumn palette, who looks great in coral, burnt orange, and rust, is probably not going to start cruising the racks for anything in popsicle orange. (Creamsicle, maybe.)
Not that I’m in the market for a caftan or argyle vest, orange or otherwise, so maybe I’m just miffed because orange is third only to camel and olive drab on the list of colors that make me look terrible. Or maybe it’s first on the list. I’ve actual made fashion-mistake purchases of the camel and olive drab variety, only to decide two years post-purchase, that the reason that fabulous, mark-downed, cool-design dress still has the tags on it is because it makes me look like my personal death-knell is about to toll. With the exception of a baseball cap I got to wear to a Syracuse basketball game last year - trust me, you don’t casually roll into the Carrier Dome without a bit of wearin’ o’ the orange – I have never purchased an article of clothing that is bright orange.
As a child, I had a very sporty pair of bright orange shorts that I tastefully partnered with a hunter green short sleeve sweater. I wore this when I was swirling my orange hula hoop around my hips. During the rage, my father brought home two hula hoops: one blue and the other orange. I glommed onto the blue one, but when my sister Kath expressed a liking for the orange one – she of the more sophisticated taste (then and now) – I immediately decided that I wanted it. True to her older sister cool, Kath - who fought tooth and nail with me about plenty, but never about the last/best/only whatever - just shrugged it off and gave it to me. Not that we had all that much to quibble over, but she was past master of getting my goat by her colossal indifference to whether she got the last fake-fudgicle in the freezer, or the orange hula hoop. (Note to self: ask Kath whether she actually gave a rat’s patoot or not, or whether she just wanted to irritate me by so easily giving in on the object of my desire that it’s value completely and utterly diminished.)
And I did have an orange blouse when I was in seventh grade, which I remember because I was wearing it the day I got my first period. (Post hoc non ergo propter hoc.) Other than that…
I do like the color, however, and have things that are orange that go quite nicely, thank you, with things that are blue. Of which I have a lot.
But if the taste-makers want us to run out and buy a lot of new stuff and, thus, revive the economy, you’d think they’d pick a color more neutral than bright orange. Then again, maybe they don’t care what the average whey-faced, pale-eyed American does with her clothing allowance. Let them wear navy blue clunkers from Talbot’s!
This all puts me in mind of something that happened years ago, when I worked at Genuity. I was on the steering committee for a marketing off-site, and the goodie-bag giveaway was going to a sailing jacket. The committee member in charge of goodie-bags who, needless to say was not boring-old-content-maker-me, modeled a few styles. The team members were all leaning toward the neutrals: black, navy, or light khaki. She was liking the canary yellow.
Which was not surprising, since she had the coloring for it, and looked fabulous in a color that made the rest of us look like stale, squashed Peeps.
Let’s just say my husband was happy to have a bright yellow rain jacket.
Anyway, orange you glad you don’t need to follow the merciless dictates of fashion?
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And a Happy Valentine’s Day to all Pink Slip readers, and to my very own funny valentine.
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