12/13/2023 0 Comments Cerulean blue bee![]() ![]() ![]() “Sustainability is very big now, and I think on some subliminal level, an awareness of that has seeped onto the high street – but it still had a catwalk story to support it”.Īs it happens, cerulean blue was likely chosen for the film because it looks good on screen, and it sounds legit – and because six years prior, cerulean blue was named colour of the year by the Pantone institute. Glenville thinks another factor in the rise of yellow is its association with nature: “It is an eco colour, along with blue and green,” he says. “The uptrend in soft buttercup yellow is also an evolution of 2017’s mass adoption of pink,” says Hannah Craggs, a forecaster at WGSN, suggesting we latch on to colour as a way of making sense of the world. Glenville cites the heatwave it’s not that we need cheering up as much as we need to map the climate. Yellow’s rise, for example, has been helped by other factors. It’s one thing to reflect the times, but another thing entirely to suggest that only designers can decree the colours (and trends) that will succeed. In many respects, cars followed the hemline theory: up and bright in good times, down and dark during an economic low.” After the stock market crash there was a dramatic switch to darker hues. “The most famous example is that of American automobile colours in the 1920s and 1930s. “There is good historical evidence showing that industry and consumers tend to prefer colours that reflect the tenor of the times,” agrees design historian Regina Blaszczyk, author of The Colour Revolution. “All we needed was a new name,” he says, which is probably why it’s now called either as buttercup yellow (by trend forecaster WSGN) or Gen Z yellow (coined by the Man Repeller blog). “But that’s probably because of the association.” Compared with another very popular colour, millennial pink, yellow has a rep for being tricky to pull off. “It has taken a long time to take seed,” says Tony Glenville, fashion author and forecaster. Rihanna arrives at the 2015 Met Ball Photograph: Timothy A. Since then, the colour has worked its way onto the lucrative backs of celebrities at formal occasions – see Amal Clooney at the Royal wedding, and Kate Middleton at Wimbledon this year – and eventually, on to the high street where it is now a bestseller at Topshop, Whistles and M&S. The dress became a meme, and a genesis moment for the shade, which was revisited by Alessandro Michele for his Gucci cruise 2016 collection, appeared again (albeit in a neon shade) in Balenciaga’s pre-fall collection (the first under Demna Gvasalia) and finally earned the approval of Beyoncé, who wore a yellow 2016 Roberto Cavalli in the Hold Up video. It arguably exploded on the red carpet in 2015 when Rihanna wore a yellow dress by Guo Pei to the Met Ball. Take yellow, one of the biggest trends of 2018. ![]() Arguing that you are oblivious to trends is a fashion choice in itself. ![]() As a fashion journalist I can vouch for its gist: that regardless of how immune you think you are to fashion, if you buy clothes, you are indebted to someone else’s choice. The screenwriter, Aline Brosh McKenna, was a comic writer who went on to co-create Netflix’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which rather throws the validity of the whole idea into question. Oscar de la Renta’s autumn/winter 2002 collection actually showed smart sportswear in grey, taupe and black, while Yves Saint Laurent’s collection was almost entirely black. It is curious then that this cerulean blue treatise – so referenced by the fashion industry – was in fact fabricated by scriptwriters. Last week, influencer and broadcaster Derek Blasberg tweeted to his 276,000 followers: “How many times have you used the ‘cerulean blue belt’ explanation from The Devil Wears Prada to validate the importance of the fashion industry?”, while in June, New York Times fashion critic Vanessa Friedman referenced it in a searing defence of why she reports on couture. Still it is notable just how often the theory is cited now, often in defence of the fashion industry. The editorial team celebrate by painting the office doors a shade of rose. Here pink is couched as something more arbitrary, an edict from a magazine editor to the women of the US to banish their red and blue clothes from their wardrobes. The trickle-down effect has been a fashion truism for decades, celebrated by the song Think Pink in the whimsical 1957 fashion film Funny Face. ![]()
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