It seems the marketing departments for tampons, Barbie dolls, and makeup leaned so hard into the idea of femininity that those colors became alienating and overly simplistic. “A cohort raised to distrust pink has turned contrarian and embraced a muddied, faded version of the color,” The Cut’s Véronique Hyland wrote in August, referring to a long history of consumer goods that pandered to women with baby and hot pinks. Whatever healthy glow a faded pink T-shirt conjures, however, the color’s appearance in pop culture has also given it deeper meaning - one that rebels against what’s expected of the female sex. There’s kind of a healthy glow that’s attached to shades of pink like that.” Everlane and Opening Ceremony It has a certain innocence, it’s unobtrusive, it’s very subtle. “It’s not bubblegum pink,” Leatrice Eiseman, the executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, said. It became “ millennial” pink.įrom a purely aesthetic point of view, millennial pink is an easy color to look at and wear. Somewhere along the way, it became representative of a certain female cohort. The music video for “Cranes in the Sky” opens with Solange swathed in a series of outfits, each a sensual variation of that fleshy color. In October, fashion startup Everlane teamed up with Opening Ceremony for a line of clothing from the same family of pinks and beiges. Brands like Acne Studios, Glossier, Kinfolk, and Thinx incorporated it in their shopping bags, websites, magazine covers, and ad campaigns. Pantone, which in 2015 had declared “Rose Quartz” the color of the year for 2016, acknowledged the hue’s staying power by listing a lighter version of it - dubbed, ahem, “Pale Dogwood” - in its Spring 2017 fashion color report. Just over a year after the color’s introduction into mainstream consumer culture, it has been digested, reiterated, flattened, darkened, lightened, and adopted by a specific set of brands with a specific set of customers. Others praised Apple’s ability to “convince the masses that pink is not girly, lame, or gay.” Feminist author Roxane Gay simply tweeted that she wanted one. “It’s silly and stupid, but pink is still seen by many as an overtly feminine color,” Christina Warren wrote for Mashable. Some wondered if Apple deliberately didn’t call it pink to avoid criticism. But in September 2015, when Apple premiered a “rose gold” version of the gadget, the conversation veered into gender politics. You could say it all began with a new shade of iPhone.Ĭhatter after the premiere of an Apple product is typically related to specs and stocks.

Rose gold pantone