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The sad beige aesthetic: why has the world suddenly turned taupe?
- getToTheChopin 2y agoI noticed this in Seoul and Busan -- almost everyone was wearing similar outfits, predominantly in Beige / White / Black.
- KingMob 2y agoFor sure. I live in Thailand, and it's super-dominant amongst East Asian tourists here.
- esperent 2y agoI run a cafe in Vietnam. 90% Western tourists clientele especially over xmas. During the Christmas day rush, every table full (maybe 40 people total), my partner pointed out that every single person, young, old, and even most of the children, were wearing black with just a bit of white and grey.
- raziel2p 2y agoI'm a western tourist in SEA currently, packed very light and realized I really don't know how to dress for warm weather because I'm so not used to it! that combined with limited luggage space meant I left my colorful clothes behind and am wearing a lot of white, black, beige. hope I don't get judged too harsh!
- esperent 2y agoI'm not judging at all, just interested, and providing a counterpoint to the idea that it's an Asian fashion trend. I don't think it was a weather thing. There was a "cold" spell here over Christmas. Probably 20 to 24C, which for us westerners is basically wear whatever you like weather. For Vietnamese it's winter time though, locals are all bundled up! This incident was probably somewhat coincidental, but I have noticed several times previously in the cafe, with less people, it's all black, white, and grey. Btw have a great trip! I was a western tourist too around 8 years ago and ended up never leaving. Life is good here, challenging and different.
- raziel2p 2y agowhat I meant was, at home I have a good diverse set of outfits for colder weather: long trousers, long sleeved shirts, sweaters, jackets, boots... all in different colors and styles. but I have a total of 2 shorts and a bunch of boring t-shirts for 25C+ weather - simply because I rarely have incentive to expand it :)
- jq-r 2y agoIn Croatia all the youth are wearing black, and what makes even less sense, they wear black during summer too. Boggles the mind.
- herbst 2y agoSadly in most of Europe this pattern is taking over too. There are just a few cities in between that seem like a colourful bastion against the boring mainstream. And not in their architecture, it's seems to be more about the youth scene. Pilsen in Czech republic is a mostly grey boring city, but the people wear much more colorful clothes than in similar cities. The main difference I saw is more nature and a healthy pub culture.
- raziel2p 2y agoin Amsterdam, there seems to have been a slight counter culture movement against this in the last few years, combined with heavy 80s-00s nostalgia. the beige look feels very influencer or tasteless upper/middle class to me.
- herbst 2y agoWhen I've been to the Netherlands (could be 6 years or so) Rotterdam was a grey nightmare for me. Streets, People (and weather that time of the year). Haarlem oder the other side was colorful even with bad weather (Amsterdam felt full of colour anyway :)
- wink 2y agoI used to dress mostly in black (with an exception for blue jeans and camo cargo pants, and the prints on t-shirts) but since I turned 30 to my surprise I find myself wearing more grey stuff. At least it's good for jokes that I finally introduced some colors.
- throw0101c 2y ago> […] but since I turned 30 to my surprise I find myself wearing more grey stuff. Perhaps in a few years you will go from Wink the Grey to Wink the White (just hope you don't need an encounter with a Balrog to accomplish it).
- cynicalsecurity 2y ago"Why everyone's a normie?", the author is wondering. Good luck being weird or even different in the world that enforces unanimity.
- rsynnott 2y agoI mean, there's always a dominant fashion trend (_particularly_ in interior decoration; you can really date this to within a few years in many cases), and there are always people who don't conform to it. This isn't new and hasn't changed.
- herbst 2y agoI guess I never had a 'normie' style but since I've started to wear mostly bright, pastel or at least light colours people are actually nicer and more interested. I haven't found any negative side effects other than the lost feeling when I accidently wear grey and the world somehow feels different.
- mingus88 2y ago> I’m just going to say that maybe you’re criticising it because you yourself cannot achieve it. Or you want to be like that, but you just don’t know how,” she says. Man, these influencer people are exhausting… it’s hard to believe that some people think this way
- worthless-trash 2y agoOnly the insane stand out.
- gazchop 2y agoYep. A friend of mine was dating one a while back. We went on a double date and had to stop 22 times on the South Bank in London so she could do fish face and get a good picture for Instagram. Not talking about an iPhone here either. A Sony DSLR on a gimball. The date I had said "maybe we should push her in the river?". (They didn't last. Neither did we. At least ours was over a disagreement on a statistical model on an academic paper though)
- lupusreal 2y agoMaybe it will evolve into a revival of the earthy warm color schemes of the 70s. Beige and brown, but also yellows, greens, oranges, etc. That wouldn't be so bad.
- rsynnott 2y agoIt's all cyclical; we've been here before. As long as we don't go back to the nightmarish patterned carpets of the 1970s...
- esperent 2y ago> nightmarish patterned carpets of the 1970s The modern equivalent is Hello Kitty rugs.
- strken 2y agoI once lived in a sharehouse with blue paisley carpets and dark wood trim in the living room. It had a lot of natural light and honestly wasn't too bad.
- bell-cot 2y agoThe painted carpets weren't* nearly as bad as the kitchens. I was stuck with avocado appliances and FD-arrived-too-late brown cabinets once. *Well, usually. If you shopped at a reasonable store, and had decent tastes. If not - horribly and ugly things have been available in every era.
- mtrovo 2y agoLooking forward to the great comeback of the popcorn ceiling.
- GuB-42 2y agoTo be honest, I am seeing so much blandness that I will welcome patterned carpets for a change. I would definitely go to the hotel featured in "The Shining" if it wasn't for the murders.
- oneeyedpigeon 2y ago> How does she feel about having the accusation of being sad and beige levelled against her? “Pretty neutral.” I'm sure that response was cleverly edited (or a masterfully self-aware joke), but it sure demonstrates how the decor reflects their attitude. "If I don't survive, tell my wife 'Hello'", indeed.
- VincentEvans 2y agoIs this still covered by "Millennium Gray" trend or is it something new?
- wolfhumble 2y agoNo, this something completely New(ish)!™ It is: Warmer, softer and cosier! "Joa Studholme, a colour advisor for Farrow & Ball, thinks the proliferation of beige is a reaction to grey – sometimes dubbed “millennial grey” thanks to its association with a generation of renters out of ideas . . . It’s a neutral with warmth – beige shades are softer, cosier and a little less hard-edged.”
- wink 2y agoIn my parents' house we had one beige and one grey bathroom (different floors) and the jury was still out 15y later which one looked better :P
- Xcelerate 2y agoRegardless of the vibrancy of the colors, one trend I really like that I hope doesn’t reverse any time soon is how bright and sunny many new buildings are nowadays. I immediately notice the difference in my mood walking into a modern office where the walls are essentially giant glass windows vs a building in an office park built over the last few decades. Old brick buildings with tiny windows on college campuses feel claustrophobic compared to the newer ones. Modern coffee shops are airier and cheerier compared to the dark caves of yore. Even homes are being built with larger windows now. Not everyone likes this trend (and many people who code still prefer dark rooms), but for me I think it’s great. I thrive on a lot of sunlight. Perhaps the bright and varied colors of the past were more so a counterbalance to the lack of sunlight? With more natural light available, muted color schemes feel more appropriate.
- lupusreal 2y agoAs a society we need to do whatever it takes to keep architects happy. Whenever they get depressed they have a tendency to take it out on the rest of us. If they despair, they want everybody else to suffer too and design inhuman monstrosities that beat down the spirit. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Penn_Station_concourse.jpg https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Penn_Station_conco...
- rsynnott 2y agoI mean, that's like that because they wanted to build Madison Square Garden on top of it; any architects involved were working under impossible constraints.
- lupusreal 2y agoJust because the plan requires a low ceiling doesn't mean the end result needs to look like a dead midwest shopping mall. It doesn't have to be like this specifically, but it demonstrates the point: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=moscow+subway&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=moscow+subway&iax=images&ia=images
- stuaxo 2y agoJesus's wept, this needs to end soon. The world is going to shite, let's have some vibrancy and colour to counter things.
- BoxOfRain 2y agoReject neutrality and embrace the Welsh seaside town aesthetic[1]. Aberystwyth is a good example of a place where the architecture makes it look happier than most towns, it's all bright colours and Victoriana that escaped demolition at the hands of the post-war Brutalists. [1] https://static.cozycozy.com/images/catalog/bg2/horizontal-aberystwyth.jpg https://static.cozycozy.com/images/catalog/bg2/horizontal-ab...
- jq-r 2y agoExactly. The world is too grey to wear boring colours.
- jl6 2y agoI get wanting a neutral background. It makes the feature foreground stand out. But for the foreground to be neutral too? What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were they just born with a heart full of neutrality?
- amelius 2y agoMy first computer had that color ... Hackers were ahead of the fashion curve.
- world2vec 2y agoI'm one of those people that wear full black clothing, head to toe, most of the days (maybe some white and grey here and there). But for my home I prefer some vibrant colours thrown in, something to contrast.
- everyone 2y agoI wonder can this affect your vision? Like walking in snow with white featureless ground and white featureless sky.
- herbst 2y agoI have kinda bad night sight, and recently went to some parties where more or less everyone was wearing black I couldn't tell where person a ends and person b begins most of the time.
- raziel2p 2y agothere was an article somewhere claiming that all beige/neutral colors are bad for infants, they need color stimuli to develop their sight or sense of color.
- euroderf 2y agothe seepage of sepia. bleah.
- thinkingemote 2y agoI wear tech conference merch they are still quite colourful and not beige.
- amenhotep 2y agoI sometimes think that I am neurotic, then I read an article like this and boggle at the lengths other people take neuroticism to.
- permo-w 2y agoI think this article, and the general reaction to this trend online completely misunderstands what's going on. this isn't some depressive conservative neutrality and lack of conviction, it's a conscious rejection of the blaring in-your-face marketing excite-o-sphere that we've all been herded into over the last 70 years. the real sad thing is that people think bright colours = happiness, not that some kids are being dressed more like their grandparents might have been.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- EPWN3D 2y agoI think part of it is that it's difficult to use bright colors well. It's very easy to go overboard and be tacky with non-neutrals. My wife and I worked with a designer for our house, and we agreed that we would not leave a single wall white. The results are fantastic, and the house has so much more personality than would be possible with a neutral pallet. But the color and wallpaper choices were very deliberate and considered, not to mention how expensive the whole process was.
- sudders 2y agoNow I am interested in the result. Care to share some photos?
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoI've started noticing this on cars. Not taupe, but something like 70-80% of the cars are white, grey, silver, or black, which are all monochrome in different ways. Few cars are colorful now.
- lupusreal 2y agoI'm not convinced, those along with dark blue and dark red/maroon seem like evergreen car colors to me, always popular. But I also see a lot more vivid "neon" colors now. Bright blue, lime green, etc. I remember those sort of colors being very novel years ago, but now they seem common. A minority still, but still pretty common.