Read Online Bellwether by Connie Willis - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Connie Willis
Tags: antique
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who really understands.”
I wandered down the mall, looking at fairy T-shirts, fairy pillows, fairy soaps, and a cologne in a flower-shaped bottle called Elfmaiden. The Paper Doll had fairy greeting cards, fairy calendars, and fairy wrapping paper. The Peppercorn had a fairy teapot The Quilted Unicorn, combining several trends, featured a caffe latte cup painted with a fairy dressed as a violet
The sun had disappeared, and the day had turned gray and chilly. It looked as if it might even start to snow. I walked down past the Latte Lenya to the Fashion Front and went in to get warm and to see what color postmodern pink was.
Color fads are usually the result of a technological breakthrough. Mauve and turquoise, the colors of the 1870s, were brought about by a scientific breakthrough in the manufacture of dyes. So were the Day-Glo colors of the 1960s. And the new jewel-tone maroon and emerald car colors.
The fact that new colors are few and far between has never stopped fashion designers, though. They just give a new name to an old color. Like Schiaparelli’s “shocking” pink in the 1920s, and Chanel’s “beige” for what had previously been a nondescript tan. Or name a color after somebody, whether they wore it or not, like Victoria blue, Victoria green, Victoria red, and the ever-popular, and a lot more logical, Victoria black.
The clerk in the Fashion Front was talking on the phone to her boyfriend and examining her split ends. “Do you have postmodern pink?” I said.
“Yeah,” she said belligerently, and turned back to the phone. “I have to go wait on this woman,” she said, slammed the phone down, and slouched over to the racks.
It is a fad, I thought, following her. Flip is a fad.
She shoved past a counter full of angel sweatshirts marked seventy-five percent off, and gestured at the rack. “And it’s po-mo pink,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Not postmodern.”
“It’s supposed to be the hot color for fall,” I said.
“Whatever,” she said, and slouched back to the phone while I examined “the hottest new color to hit since the sixties.”
It wasn’t new. It had been called ashes-of-roses the first time around in 1928 and dove pink the second in 1954.
Both times it had been a grim, grayish pink that washed out skin and hair, which hadn’t stopped it from being hugely popular. It no doubt would be again in its present incarnation as po-mo pink.
It wasn’t as good a name as ashes-of-roses, but names don’t have to be enticing to be faddish. Witness flea, the winning color of 1776. And the hit of Louis XVI’s court had been, I’m not kidding, puce. And not just plain puce. It had been so popular it’d come in a whole variety of appetizing shades: young puce, old puce, puce-belly, puce-thigh, and puce-with-milk-fever.
I bought a three-foot-long piece of po-mo pink ribbon to take back to the lab, which meant the clerk had to get off the phone again. “This is for hair wraps,” she said, looking disapprovingly at my short hair, and gave me the wrong change.
“Do you like po-mo pink?” I asked her.
She sighed. “It’s the boss color for fall.”
Of course. And therein lay the secret to all fads: the herd instinct. People wanted to look like everybody else. That was why they bought white bucks and pedal pushers and bikinis. But someone had to be the first one to wear platform shoes, to bob their hair, and that took the opposite of herd instinct.
I put my incorrect change and my ribbon in my shoulder bag (very passe) and went back out onto the mall. It had started to spit snow and the street musicians were shivering in their Birkenstocks and Ecuador shirts. I put on my mittens (completely swarb) and walked back down toward the library, looking at yuppie shops and bagel stands and getting more and more depressed. I had no idea where any of these fads came from, even po-mo pink, which some fashion designer had come up with. But the fashion designer couldn’t make people buy
I wandered down the mall, looking at fairy T-shirts, fairy pillows, fairy soaps, and a cologne in a flower-shaped bottle called Elfmaiden. The Paper Doll had fairy greeting cards, fairy calendars, and fairy wrapping paper. The Peppercorn had a fairy teapot The Quilted Unicorn, combining several trends, featured a caffe latte cup painted with a fairy dressed as a violet
The sun had disappeared, and the day had turned gray and chilly. It looked as if it might even start to snow. I walked down past the Latte Lenya to the Fashion Front and went in to get warm and to see what color postmodern pink was.
Color fads are usually the result of a technological breakthrough. Mauve and turquoise, the colors of the 1870s, were brought about by a scientific breakthrough in the manufacture of dyes. So were the Day-Glo colors of the 1960s. And the new jewel-tone maroon and emerald car colors.
The fact that new colors are few and far between has never stopped fashion designers, though. They just give a new name to an old color. Like Schiaparelli’s “shocking” pink in the 1920s, and Chanel’s “beige” for what had previously been a nondescript tan. Or name a color after somebody, whether they wore it or not, like Victoria blue, Victoria green, Victoria red, and the ever-popular, and a lot more logical, Victoria black.
The clerk in the Fashion Front was talking on the phone to her boyfriend and examining her split ends. “Do you have postmodern pink?” I said.
“Yeah,” she said belligerently, and turned back to the phone. “I have to go wait on this woman,” she said, slammed the phone down, and slouched over to the racks.
It is a fad, I thought, following her. Flip is a fad.
She shoved past a counter full of angel sweatshirts marked seventy-five percent off, and gestured at the rack. “And it’s po-mo pink,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Not postmodern.”
“It’s supposed to be the hot color for fall,” I said.
“Whatever,” she said, and slouched back to the phone while I examined “the hottest new color to hit since the sixties.”
It wasn’t new. It had been called ashes-of-roses the first time around in 1928 and dove pink the second in 1954.
Both times it had been a grim, grayish pink that washed out skin and hair, which hadn’t stopped it from being hugely popular. It no doubt would be again in its present incarnation as po-mo pink.
It wasn’t as good a name as ashes-of-roses, but names don’t have to be enticing to be faddish. Witness flea, the winning color of 1776. And the hit of Louis XVI’s court had been, I’m not kidding, puce. And not just plain puce. It had been so popular it’d come in a whole variety of appetizing shades: young puce, old puce, puce-belly, puce-thigh, and puce-with-milk-fever.
I bought a three-foot-long piece of po-mo pink ribbon to take back to the lab, which meant the clerk had to get off the phone again. “This is for hair wraps,” she said, looking disapprovingly at my short hair, and gave me the wrong change.
“Do you like po-mo pink?” I asked her.
She sighed. “It’s the boss color for fall.”
Of course. And therein lay the secret to all fads: the herd instinct. People wanted to look like everybody else. That was why they bought white bucks and pedal pushers and bikinis. But someone had to be the first one to wear platform shoes, to bob their hair, and that took the opposite of herd instinct.
I put my incorrect change and my ribbon in my shoulder bag (very passe) and went back out onto the mall. It had started to spit snow and the street musicians were shivering in their Birkenstocks and Ecuador shirts. I put on my mittens (completely swarb) and walked back down toward the library, looking at yuppie shops and bagel stands and getting more and more depressed. I had no idea where any of these fads came from, even po-mo pink, which some fashion designer had come up with. But the fashion designer couldn’t make people buy
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