Have you heard of Millennial Pink?
You have probably seen it in advertisements or on your Instagram feed or on the racks of a clothing store you’ve been to—you just didn’t know what it was called. You probably even own an item, or two, in this particular color.
Millennial Pink is not entirely a new color. It actually has been around since 1767 in Jean-Honore Fragonard’s The Swing painting. But it only became popular in 2014 with Wes Anderson’s movie The Grand Budapest Hotel, followed by the release of rose gold iPhone in 2015, and when Pantone named rose quartz the joint color of 2016.
Today, the color has been a constant presence on runways (Chanel’s Spring/Summer collection, for instance), on the racks of apparel labels (Zara and Forever 21), and on walls of hip cafes. Even in the footwear and furniture front, it is becoming a popular color of choice.
It is the kind of pink that is soft, desaturated, and almost devoid of blue undertones. It’s the non-pink pink, or as New York Times’s The Cut puts it, “Pink without the sugary prettiness.” Toned down version of Barbie pink and bubble gum, so to speak.
Millennial Pink is more of a generic term of a color than an actual color. According to The Cut, it ranges from beige with a touch of blush to a peach salmon hybrid. The closest we have for this color is the Pale Dogwood, which Pantone describes as “quiet and peaceful pink shade that engenders an aura of innocence and purity.”
But why is it popular today, especially among the younger crowd? A quick search of the term on Instagram will yield hundreds of photos, ranging from pink beverage to pink hair, and many more in between.
Well, the color, compared to its brighter and more saturated counterparts, is flattering (it goes well with neutrals and other pinks as shown on the cover jacket of Stephanie Danler’s Sweetbitter and in Fendi’s S/S17 collection) and pleasing to the eye—it has a calming effect, according to some. It has a sophisticated appeal that gives it a staying power.
Also, Millennial Pink veers away from the girly-girl nature to which the color pink has long been assigned—when, in fact, pink was previously a color more suitable to boys, according to a 1918 article in Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department.
Millennial Pink is androgynous, gender-neutral; it’s as if bringing us back to the time when colors didn’t dictate the gender to which it is appropriate. Blue for boys, girls for pink—or vice versa—wasn’t a thing back then. The color supports the belief of majority of millennials that gender is a spectrum and isn’t limited to male and female
Rihanna can wear pink from head to toe just as much as Zayn Malik can dye the tips of his hair in the same color.
It’s the pink for everyone: for the open-minded and for the noncommittal—those who like pink but not the pink pink. If you think about it, aren’t those the defining characteristics of this generation?