Having visited East Germany before the wall came down, I assure you some parts of the world used to be far more drab than anywhere today. Even North Korea seems

Having visited East Germany before the wall came down, I assure you some parts of the world used to be far more drab than anywhere today. Even North Korea seems to like pastels. It's also rather Anglocentric to assume that the "generic world" you describe is an "Anglosphere". Today's modern aesthetic is often described as Japanese/Zen or Scandinavian, and indeed, its biggest purveyors -- IKEA, Muji, Uniqlo, H&M -- are not from the Anglosphere.