What’s Up with all the Brown? (Part 2 on a Series on Style)
Monday, October 9, 2006 at 10:43PM Styles come and go. It used to be by decades: the Flappers in the 20's, Hippies in the 60's, seafoam green and disco in the 70's, and neon Ultra Hot stickers on the back glass in the 80's. In the 90's, things started to change. The same old trends came again but then left in a few years. In the 2000's, recycled trends are lasting just a few months to minutes before collapsing on the fashion floor. The next one is bound to last only a few days, so pay attention!
Let's be real. Brown is fuggin' ugly. It's supposed to be. It's the color of a turd, of sewer water, and of unidentifiable leftovers in the back of your fridge. Make no mistake, every trendy color is a statement of our current society. Remember how popular dark green was in the late 90's? Every Ford Taurus probably started out that color and had to be changed by the owner if he/she wanted something different. Well, the late 90's was a booming economy and green equals money. Got it? Pay attention, we're going to move really fast now.
Brown is quite possibly the color that symbolizes confusion and complacency. We're mired in a war, but it's far away (in a brownish place) and not going so well. Our economy is either great or in the crapper, depending on where you get your news. Congress just voted to effectively take away Habeas Corpus (the right for a ruler to have to show a reason why he's locking up somebody), probably our most important right and named in the Magna Carta in 1215, but nobody seems to care. When you're sad, you're blue. When you're scared, you're yellow. When you've got your head up your ass, well, all you see is brown. By the way, this isn't a political blog. It's just a commentary on society's nuances, so take any conservative vs. liberal vs. whatever commentary elsewhere. I'm usually too tired from a bike ride to argue about political stuff.
I was listening to The Spokesmen the other day and heard them talking about how many brown bikes there are in the lineup for next year. It's going to be the next colour de jour. Microsoft is releasing it's new Zune media player, their biggest gamble in years, in three colors: Black, white, and... brown? Yup. Brown. 
Who makes electronics in brown? Is it also strange that the hottest gadget lately may not be brown but is named Chocolate? And to bring the argument full circle, I scored a triathlon shirt last summer in glorious dark brown. I even had choices and still picked the poop color. And guess what? Right now, it looks pretty good.
If I welded a sociologist to a psychologist, not only would that be a really cool experiment, but the resulting very annoying person would tell you that the average person in the U.S. in 2006 would be reaching for brown in his closet or on her bike for a reason. Internally, it's comforting and staid, grounding (ah, there's that brown color again - ground) the individual against all this turmoil and confusion in his external world. Eh, maybe we should weld Bob Roll to Missy Giove instead - much more fun.
Unfortunately, you don't have much time to take advantage of this trend. The North Koreans will either nuke all of us or just themselves in short work, ending much of our head scratching with some sort of conclusion, so the time to act is now! Here are some choices that will work well:
Brown pants with a blue shirt.
Wearing normal clothes and receiving a package from UPS.
Blue jeans with a brown shirt.
Your used 2007 brown bike on Ebay in 2008 because you can't stand it anymore.
