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Every year around this time Pantone publishes a "Color of the Year," which shows up in places like graphic design, home decor, and clothing over the course of the next year. I used to follow them, and in the mid 00s they had nice colors like frog green (greenery, 2017), coral red ("Living Coral, 2019), and Emerald Green (2013). Like many things, they've been corrupted lately, and the past three years have seen "Peach Fuzz" (the color children's art sets used to use to represent people), "Mocha Mousse" (the color of a mixed race actress in an advertisement), and now... white. Literally just white. It's called "Cloud Dancer," and has a tiny bit of grayish blue in it.
People are making fun of the "authoritarian" vibes of literally just white. But also, I was hoping that the white and grey trend was on its way out? I've been seeing white and grey boxes going up this past half decade, full of coffee shops, burgers, and more recently apartment buildings, and am not a fan. At least it's not Pot Shop Green, I guess?
Does this predict another year of literally just white and Landlord Grey?
Adding: The LA Times is trying to make the best of it, by highlighting bridal fashion. The Guardian and the New York Times both mention the difficulty of keeping actually white things clean looking, and several people talk about Whiteness.
I always wonder why the modern world has such an allergy to beauty.
In a week, I will attend the most beautiful service of the liturgical year- the rorate mass begins just before sunset, in candlelight. It progresses, the church lit entirely by light shining through the stained glass at its completion. Every year, I step out, go to breakfast in some bland diner, and wonder- 'where did we go wrong?' Our buildings look like a cubist painting of dog poop covered in white and grey paint- despite that nice straight lines with some mildly interesting decorations, fleur de lis or lone stars or stylized cow's heads looks much nicer and is cheaper. Our modern art is better termed 'where's the art', with the exercise of trying to figure out what's an art exhibit and what's just an empty spot in the museum being more interesting than appreciating the 'art'.
This would be a good top level post but it's interesting that pretty much every old style of architecture is nicer than what we have now. In every town that has a pre-modern "old city" it looks better than our modern buildings and is also unique to the culture that built it.
Survivorship bias. There were lots of ugly buildings in the past as well; they just didn't survive because people didn't like them.
This might be true in the sense that there might have been a lot old shacks that have fallen into disrepair, but if something was well-built, it wasn't ugly by design the way things are now. Even 16th century social housing projects are reasonable to look at.
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