The Salience of Neutrals

By now, it’s not news that color is disappearing from our daily lives. In fact, there’s plenty of discourse on such such a depressing turn of events.

As a tween when I was getting too big for children’s clothes and begrudgingly began transitioning into adult sized clothing, my 13 year old 5’9” stature could already feel the doom of depression-core fashion that I would be sentenced to for the rest of my life. And mind you, this was in the 90’s. Vibrant saturated colors of the children’s section faded into dark, limited shades in the adult’s department. Where I could once pick out a plain shirt in a kid sized dandelion yellow, had only dark muted green or blue counterparts in grown up sizes. I didn’t know whose edict it was that adults simply did not need colors in their garments, but I didn’t like it one bit.

I remember asking my mom if after puberty, people stop liking colors as if it were some scary hormonal side effect. She shrugged and said her favorite color was black, thus proving my conjecture that indeed, hormones fried peoples’ brains, and that adults hated joy.

Now as a fully grown adult standing one inch taller than my 13 year old self, I have more information as to why color was is on a fast track to extinction. It isn’t that adults hated joy, it’s a whole lot of other things mixed together to create this monochromatic hellhole we now live in. No matter how much I try to squeeze into garments from Cat & Jack or The Children’s Palace, I’m just too tall to be in this senseless fight, and clothing is only one small part of it anyway.

I felt the compulsion to bitch rant about dissect this phenomenon one day while my daily walk coincided with the lunch hour of a nearby high school. As teenagers poured onto the street to the pizza shop, I couldn’t help but notice how the entire horde of over 30-40 kids were in some kind of self-imposed minimalist palette comprised of black, white, grey, and on a few, navy blue. Mind you, this was not a school uniform but public school where they could choose their own clothing. I started looking around at pedestrians who were not high school students, and in a state of horror, found that they too were wearing the exact same 3 shades.

And then I saw my reflection in the pizza shop’s window: lugubriously covered in a white t-shirt and black pants. I was part of the problem.

But why? It’s not for my lack of love for color, I actually adore it. Pinks, yellows, lavender, teal, anything and everything that’s not on a grey scale piques my fancy. But as I kept walking to avoid my own reflection, I started to do a mental inventory of my shirt drawer. What I realized was that I wasn’t choosing to buy white shirts (regardless of what is printed on them) but that colorful options have simply disappeared over the years. All the items in in my drawers that are bright magenta, Pikachu yellow, or lilac purple are either vintage, or procured, once again, from the kid’s section.

The correlation between the blandification of consumable goods and late-stage capitalism is undeniable. As the quality of mass produced stuff plunges into oblivion, as do the variety of colors. Appliances are almost always steel grey, white, or black. High rise condos have ash faux wood floors and white walls and countertops. Electronics are almost always some shade of neutral, aside from maybe one or two options of muted colors that are never in stock. It’s easy to push monochrome because it’s inoffensive, it’s neutral, it’s easily the most common denominator. The silver phone you use matches the white car you drive matches the black shirt you wear. It’s all easily paired, and allows consumers to mindlessly accrue things that just go together without thinking too hard about it. While the turnover for products is high, keeping the hues minimal ensures everything still fits the same aesthetic. Yes, go buy that new thing, it matches everything else you already own!

Instagrammers push the appeal of minimalism as if it’s some kind of virtue, while keeping their grid completely greige and unobtrusive. Having neutrals is digestible for a wider audience who have learned to tune out creativity and personal taste in favor of what’s safe and simple.

In late-stage capitalism, who has time to think about aesthetics other than what’s readily fed to us? We are spoon-fed homogenized palettes because it casts a wider net for consumers to get caught in. Color is a luxury now because we would have to hunt for it, and have the knowledge to know what goes with what, yet monochrome is sold as refined and affluent. We have created a fetish of simplicity without questioning it all, and this really grinds my gears.

I’ve spent most of my life in North America, and what I’ve observed is that people here claim to want uniqueness, but they don’t do it in practice. There’s a brazen sense of individualism here, where there is no consideration of how people function on a greater scale, yet the majority cave to what’s considered socially acceptable.

For example, the amount of people who don’t cover their mouths while coughing, or people who play music loudly on public transportation is staggering and it’s just normal. They are living in insulated individual bubbles and have no care for anyone else around them, yet at the same time, fear standing out.

It’s simultaneously “It’s fine if I’m the one doing it!” Fused with “I need to blend in socially.” This kind of dissonance sends my brain into a tailspin because I can’t fathom how it all works. The inherent contradiction of wanting to be just like everyone else but at the same time believing in the exceptional self screams the lack of personal power. In a society built to prioritize profit over well being yet teaches pulling oneself up by their bootstraps creates this deep longing for social harmony, yet it doesn't come naturally, culturally.

We can all dress the same to blend in, but at the end of the day, it's every person for themselves.

It’s strange that while the North American market lacks uniqueness in color while touting the importance of individualism, Asian markets have a plethora of color in their products and yet are collectivist societies. I can go on a whole tangent about how acting for the greater good was never perceived as a threat to autonomy there, most evidently during COVID, but that's a whole other matter. The point is, perhaps if social harmony is ingrained, it would not be reduced to monochromatic cosplay.

So what are we so afraid of? Why are these high schoolers imposing a sort of uniform upon themselves? Adolesence is a strange time when you’re feeling out what it means to exist within peer groups, but also a time when you are the freest to explore who you are without the burdens that come with adulthood. Why does western society claim to be more free but voluntarily use that ‘freedom’ to conform?

I don’t have any answers to the rhetorical questions posed above, I’m simply noting that contorting to acceptable social hierarchies is not for me. It's tedious and waters down any aspect of my personality that's creative and fun. I don’t want to be lobotomized when it comes to appreciating the beauty in colors, and I’m sure as shit going to wear my chaotic Lisa Frank + Spongebob collab shirt until it falls apart.

I remember from when I was little, an episode of OG Care Bears (circa 1985) called Drab City felt really important to me. It’s about how the Care Bears go to a city that’s only in shades of grey, and the people in it walk around in an apathetic daze. The more time they spent there, the more their vibrant fur also begin to grey, and they lose the ability to care, which I imagine might be lethal to the Care Bears who habitually shoot rainbows out of their bellies. This, i aso surmised at the tender age of 6, was what it must be like to grow up. There, the Care Bears meet a girl named Jill who explains the situation:

Only after they finally find the source of the greyness (a big evil gemstone) and tossed it into a bottomless pit did color return to the world and the civilians of Drab City start to feel joy. Mayor Bland even declared that the city’s name to be henceforth changed to Rainbow City. It’s been [redacted] years since I first watched this, but it feels more relevant than ever.

Funny how this show aired during the birth of Reaganomics, the beginning of unfettered capitalism that lands us where we are today — fast shitty products with even faster obsolescence, but hey it’s all good because we’ve all drank the grey Kool-Aid thinking this is classy and ✨aesthetically✨ cohesive, as if it was our personal prefrences.

My conclusion is: monochrome is terribly boring and it can go fuck itself.