Have you noticed that over the last twenty years of so that color has been disappearing from our lives? I’m not talking about natural color; fruits, vegetables, sunsets, flowers, trees, and falling leaves are still as vibrant as ever. What I’m talking about is color in our man-made world.
I hadn’t noticed this until it was succinctly pointed out in various memes. But if you take a moment you’ll notice that everything has adopted a decidedly monotone color palette. While I was waiting for the light to change on my way to a doctor appointment yesterday, I looked around ,and with the exception of a single maroon car on the opposite side of the intersection, I was surrounded in a sea of white, black, silver, and gray. As I drove on, this continued, punctuated by only a single blue vehicle. To paraphrase Henry Ford’s famous quote about the Model T, “You can have any color you want, as long as it’s white, black, silver, or gray.” The only exceptions to this grayscale rule (granted I did not visit every manufacturer’s website to verify this was uniform across brands), were MINI, JEEP, and the Chevy Corvette. Even then, the craziest colors offered (from JEEP alone) are bright orange, lemon green, and a deep purple. (If you’ve seen these in the wild, you’re not likely to forget them.) They were also uniformly an additional $600-900 per vehicle.
Thirty years ago the streets were swimming with color.
What about our interior spaces? Again, we seem to have boxed ourselves into a monochrome hell, with stone floors, white, gray, or black marble countertops, and white or black cabinets. This black and white palette was something I wholeheartedly embraced in the mid 80s, but at that time it was almost impossible to furnish your space only in black and white. If you want color on your floors, you can get different shades of brown stained hardwoods, but that’s the extent of it. Kitchen appliances? Forget the 1940s and 50s with their pink and aqua, or the lemon yellow so popular in the 60s, or even the 1970s harvest gold, avocado, and coppertone…or ven the 80s almond. Now you have a choice or white, black, or your most likely only choice, brushed stainless steel.
If you look at any of the architectural interior photos I’ve posted, all of them are uniformly white (or gray) walls, with the only color appearing in their furnishings
Clothing? I went into Target several years ago to buy some polo shirts (because of their cost and the way they fit me) and discovered I had a choice of black, white, heather gray, slate, or brown. It’s no wonder I started buying second hand IZOD at the time; they’re at least available in a rainbow of colors.
Am I just losing my mind, or have you noticed color slowly disappearing from our lives as well?
4 comments
IF it had not been for Covid and USA-brand car makers building the colors they wanted to (which included the OTHER colors), every dealership in the nation would have all had the “popular” white, black, silver/gray colors on their lots.
Position the availability of car colors to the political environments of the times. NO compromise in current times, “our way” or not. Which is black and white. Gray/silver might be the compromisers, which can usually be older people.
Stelantis/Dodge/Chrysler re-purposed the old High Impact Colors of the later 1960s several years ago. On Jeeps and Dodges. Plus “Olive Drab” and “Desert Sand” colors.
GM has two interior color schemes. black/charcoal and off-whites for accent. I recently bought a used XT5 in the medium crimson red metallic with a off-white/black interior. Have to use a towel to sit on so my denim jeans don’t transfer dye to the seating surfaces! Wish it had a black interior, but apparently that didn’t come with the interior color package.
It’s really BAD when a mid-level 1956 car had a spiffier-looking interior than ANY modern car! Fancier brocade weaves of fabric and multi-toned seat covers.
About 10 years ago, GM started to put some neat 1960s metallic colors on their smallest cars. Lime green metallics, bright colors of red and blue, too. Really made those cars visible, which was what they were supposed to do.
NOW, everybody is in “stealth mode”. Black car, black wheels, deep tinted glass. black sidewall tires. Again, a social phenomena of people wanting to sneak around, it seems. Used to be that the only black vehicles were big Cadillac or Lincoln limos! Or cars of “important people”, or undercover cops. Not any more!
The ways of the Fashion Gods are inscrutable and annoying. I prefer bland colors but do enjoy having a choice.
I’ve noticed a plethora of gray, silver, black, and white, with the occasional blue or red vehicles. I don’t think much about it.
Nope it’s not just you. I was in Bloomingdale’s yesterday and every thing was in brown, navy, taupe or gray. I hated it. I love color. I just bought a new car and I chose Vegas Red as my color.