THE COLOUR PINK:
WAS FOR BABY BOYS TILL LITTLE GIRLS STEPPED INTO THE RINK.
Pink was considered to be an appropriate colour for a young boy. It is a light shade of red, which has strong associations with strength, with war, with blood.
This is the time of year when we all start thinking pink — it’s the season of romance. Welcoming the onset of the Spring season (which for fashion is normally always about soft, pastel, floral and romantic-inspired styles) is Valentine’s Day. And while it may seem clichéd to say it’s the season to embrace all things pink, it really is the colour of the moment. There were two shades of pink that were on the Pantone shades of 2017 for Spring/Summer. According to the expert colour forecaster’s intelligence report both a pale soft pink called Pale Dogwood and a more bright vibrant pink called Pink Yarrow are among the top hues for fashion in Spring 2017. While one pink is calming and has a very serene feel, the other is vibrant, bold and spirited. And the catwalk concurred with Pantone’s report — whether it was the subtle and flowery Chanel pink or the bold raspberry at Bottega Veneta, it is time to think pink!
The new pink has a new attitude. Gucci’s Alessandro Michele even had pink lighting set the boudoir mood for his show. Phoebe Philo at Celine paired her pink with red boots. Red was again combined with pink at Givenchy and Nina Ricci decided pink’s new best friend should be purple. This is not a pretty pink but one that has spirit. It is a colour not of softness but of strength. JCrew’s pajama-style pink shirts or Vetement’s sporty street style pink prove that the colour spells fun, is playful and of course, full of passion.
While we think of pink as the colour of femininity, it was originally a shade that was associated with boys more than girls. If you remember the novel, The Great
Gatsby, Jay Gatsby wore a pink suit when he had lunch with the one love of his life Daisy and her husband Tom Buchanan. And there was nothing effeminate about the former military officer — Gatsby may have been a fashionable man but he was not effeminate. At that time (and of course it was in the days before prenatal testing) all newborn babies wore white. Infants wore a colour that was gender neutral almost until they could walk. Pink was considered to be an appropriate colour for a young boy to wear. It is of course, a light shade of red, which has strong associations with strength, with war, with blood. Blue, on the other hand, was actually seen as more delicate and demure and so perhaps more suited for little girls.
It was not till a decade after The Great Gatsby was first published that pink became the colour associated with femininity. While the reason for this change can’t be pinpointed, it seems that clothing manufacturers decided that it was time to reverse things. And since they were the people who set the trends, the idea of pink being for girls and blue for boys just stuck. The association became stronger in the 1980s when women who had been children during the 1960s (the decade of bra burning) became mothers. They decided it was time to let girls be as ‘girlie’ as they wanted. And the best way to do this was to dress their newborns in pink. Of late, we have had the whole ‘metrosexual’ wave, where pink became the colour for men who were confident, touching on both their masculine and feminine sides. Pink is no longer just for girls and that is evident in Spring 2017 as it emerged as a strong colour for the boys too — from Top Man to Gucci, pink was de rigueur on the ramp. For now, pink is the colour to wear not just because it’s the season of love and passion but because pink is now having its second innings.