As a teenager, I was even more prone to daydreaming than I am now. Flipping through magazines like this one, I became enraptured by the idea of a little black dress. One day, I fantasised, I would become the kind of woman in possession of a LBD. As promised by the fashion editorials, I’d take it from day to night; I’d dress it up, dress it down; I’d let myself be illuminated by its shadelessness and propel myself winningly through rooms cloaked in its armour of powerful, cool femininity.
To be very clear, it was specifically the idea of the LBD that appealed, so seductively acronymised, rather than the dress itself. I was interested in the status it carried, and the status it would, by proximity, allow me. It was the style signature of Capote’s swans and Audrey Hepburn; it was the marker of a woman accepted, even ushered, into society. American Vogue even called it “a sort of uniform for all women of taste.”
Black has long been associated with chicness in Western fashion. So, for that matter, have all the neutral shades of the spectrum: white, grey, beige and, these days, even chocolate brown. They are the hallmarks of minimalism, which has, over the 20th and 21st centuries, become synonymous with wealth, style and “good taste”. In 2024, this has only gained traction. We’ve seen demure colour palettes at fashion weeks in London, New York, Paris and Milan so far, both at ready-to-wear and haute couture showings. Valentino showed a collection entirely in black last season (a notable departure from the vividness of its Pink PP collection a few seasons ago) as did other luxury houses including Balenciaga, Hermès and Comme des Garçons. According to the fashion search engine Tagwalk, 34% of the Hermès runway was brown, 21% of Dior and Chloé were beige and cream, while shades of khaki were up over 50%.
"Colour has been systematically marginalised, reviled, diminished and degraded"
But it’s not just in fashion. In 2020, the Science Museum Group published a chart which reflected a study in which analysts pored over around 7000 photographs of quotidian objects from the collection held in the museum that were created over the previous 200 years. “The rise in gray”, or the decline of colours, was the most notable trend the researchers noticed.
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“Chromophobia”—a distaste for colour—“runs deep in the way we’re socialised to dress,” US based fashion commentator Viv Chen tells Cosmopolitan Australia. “Wearing neutrals like black, white, and shades of beige/cream have long been a visual code for whiteness and wealth.” Just look to the thrall that the “quiet luxury” movement had fashion under just last season and the dupes that it spawned: all around the world, women were flocking to robe themselves in Loro Piana grey cashmere and Max Mara camel coats—or whatever the equivalent in their price range was. Unsaturated pieces are understood as coded ‘rich’.
The idea of ‘chromophobia’ that Chen mentions was first attributed to cultural critic David Batchelor, who linked the use and embrace of colour to class, wealth and colonisation. “It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that, in the West, since Antiquity, colour has been systematically marginalised, reviled, diminished and degraded,” he writes. “ As with all prejudices, its manifest form, its loathing, masks a fear: a fear of contamination and corruption by something that is unknown or appears unknowable.”
Batchelor’s idea of ‘chromophobia’ is reflected all around us. In interiors, in signage, on cars, on walls and, of course—in fashion. But scholar Carl Jennings notes that the history of the West was not always colourless: in fact, the Parthenon of Greece and the Roman statues we now see as white, were in fact garishly decorated in their time—they’ve just faded to colourless versions of themselves over time. Jennings explains that The Reformation is partly to blame for this: the influence of Calvin and Protestantism stripped religion and excess back, equating colour and excess with sin, indulgence and depravity. Colour was emotional, and considered the enemy of reason, logic and progress.
"Our culture equates lack of colour with professionalism, seriousness, intellect"
“You can never have color without emotion,” Batchelor writes. “Color is always seen as too much to do with pleasure and the senses.” In the modern day, we continue to link sombre colours to civility and logic. “Officewear tends to be neutral, because our culture equates the lack of color with professionalism, seriousness, intellect,” says Chen. Uniforms are toned-down, Meanwhile, bright colours are often painted as ‘tacky’, or ‘too much’. Even McDonalds, that beacon of capitalist universality and accessibility, has changed its cheery red and yellow buildings to facades of brown and grey.
Of course, in places other than the West, colour continues to be a key part of fashion and selfexpression. Just take South Asia: the textile history of the subcontinent is rich and diverse, and traditional fashion, from sarees to chudidhars to lehengas, are often boldly coloured and embellished.
“To understand India’s love for colour, you only have to look to its cultural traditions,” says Akanksha Kamath, a former fashion features director who has worked in both India and the UK. “It’s a country that celebrates colour. For instance, Holi is the festival of colour, Diwali has a strong significance with gold or yellow, and our weddings are dominated by colour—where white and black are considered inauspicious.”
"The more [I] get to learn about [my] culture, especially when it comes to sarees, the more [I] realise… these colours tell stories of our landscapes, creatures, evoke feelings"
“In India, a wedding is a means to showcase your hospitality, honour your family, friends and social connections, and do it to the best of your financial capability. It’s a monetary muscle flex, wrapped in community service and hospitality. There is no stealth wealth or quiet luxury there.”
“It’s funny, white and black are often tied to death in our culture, both physically and emotionally,” agrees Indian-Canadian Natasha Thasan, a saree draping expert. For years now Thasan has been studying the heritage and traditions of South Asian textiles, and how women over the centuries and across geographies have used different kinds of draping techniques to express their cultural heritage. “The more [I] get to learn about [my] culture, especially when it comes to sarees, the more [I] realise… these colours tell stories of our landscapes, creatures, evoke feelings… it’s such a sensory experience,” she says. “I love that vibrant colours are our norm, rooted in our traditions and the Vedas, meant for us to embrace and celebrate.” These days, Thasan wears traditional, vividly coloured sarees around Toronto, her hometown—to the mall, to the shops, to wherever she’s going for the day—and encourages other young South Asian women who have adopted mostly Western wardrobes to do the same. “Lately, I’ve been really into yellow,” she says. “I tend to gravitate toward yellow and green. I like to think of saree dressing as being a flower. My skin is the soil, green as the roots—a perfect base—and yellow blooms as the petals. When you start thinking of dressing like a flower, it changes everything. Suddenly, every colour feels possible, and everything feels beautiful.”
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Maxine Wylde, a Melbourne-based content creator, is known online for the way she mixes and matches unusual and bold colour combinations—even in a typically Western wardrobe. “ I think my love for colour stemmed from interiors and it just naturally crept into my closet,” she says. She often uses a ‘colour bible’ of combinations, which informs videos she makes that experiment with colour theory. In trying on an outfit made up of, say, soft pink, duck egg blue and deep chocolate brown, she teaches her followers about complimentary colours, split complementaries, colour tetrads, triads, and more. But while there is a foundation of theory behind her work, Wylde’s approach is, at its heart, instinctive. “Colour and mood are one hundred percent linked for me. If I’m in a colour that I feel isn’t resonating with me, I literally feel it in my overall mood that day.”
So does she ever feel that she stands out too much, amongst the minimalist leaning fashion crowd? “Sometimes I do feel like I’m not wearing what I’m ‘supposed’ to be wearing and can occasionally feel a bit judged,” Wylde reflects. “But it’s fashion—if you aren’t doing it for you then who are you getting dressed for? I always remind myself that unique self-expression is what pushes the fashion world forward.”
These days, I own a lovely little black dress; my younger self would have been proud. It’s a vintage number from a boutique in the Midwest, of all places, and it swings above my knees, soft and velvety to the touch. It’s versatile; it presents itself as an option for many occasions. Often, however, I find myself flicking past it hanging in my wardrobe in favour of something a little brighter, a little bolder. A little more colourful.
This article originally appeared in Issue 02 of Cosmopolitan Australia. Get your copy and subscribe to future issues here.
