Walk down any main street of any big city and you’re bound to see the same shops, the same styles, the same sea of gray. But beneath it all, a revolution’s brewing, expressed in a new generation of bold prints and a rainbow of clashing colors.
“People are reacting against homogenous dressing,” says Leatrice Eiseman, director of the Pantone Color Institute, which sets the standards of color for the fashion industry. “After all the blacks and grays of the past few seasons, people are hungering for color.”
And wearing sometimes clashing shades is a sure way to stand out in a crowd.
Sporting brazen hues isn’t exactly new. Christian Dior broke an age-old color taboo when he mixed grays and browns as part of his New Look in the ’50s. Mary Quant paired shocking pink and orange, thus setting the fashion world on its head in the ’60s. And who could forget Christian Lacroix’s mismatched sensibility in the ’80s?
This time around, differences in color are expressed in nuances, from Oilily’s whimsical gradations of browns, beiges and oranges to Custo Barcelona’s high-tech prints and subtle mesh transparencies to Chacok’s vivid velvets and dyed knits.
What’s interesting to Eiseman, a color psychologist, is the juxtapositions of cool and warm shades. “It’s a reflection of our lives,” she says. “We seek quiet and serenity and peace of mind on the one hand, but we also indulge in bungee jumping and snowboarding. We live in a paradoxical world.”
