Color is dead. Kind of.

Lately, there has been an eerie trend of the use of neutral colors, such as black, brown, and gray in today’s fashion. We can often see this through social media. Social media is very influential when it comes to fashion trends and the formation of different aesthetics, and we often see the use of neutral colors in these aesthetics and they are used in drastically different ways. For example, clean goth and the emo aesthetic use the same colors but they use it in dramatically different ways; While the clean goth aesthetic centers around a natural makeup look, simple black cropped shirts, and a pair of black Lululemon flared leggings, the emo aesthetic is also all black but with a black band t-shirt, black jeans, converse, and dyed hair.

This trend of dark colors is also seen in high fashion. If you thumb through an issue of Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar, you often see creative uses of neutral colors. While many of these pieces seen in these magazines are classic looks, you can also see new and creative uses of these colors. For example, Gucci’s fall/winter 2024 collection, you see many pieces centered around black and dark and muted tones, but they do so in a way that is creative and new. For example, look six in the collection is centered around a black jacket that has sequins crawling up the piece with a simple black cropped tank top and simple black shorts. The piece also has black rubber-like boots.

The question that everyone is asking is will this move toward these colors change over time?

Senior Melody Irinio thinks the trend will change. “Everything is temporary. cyclical , and volatile, especially fashion”

Senior Anika Clark-Desai decides that how someone looks in these colors is a toss-up.

“There’s people who wear all black that look good, and then there’s people who wear all black that don’t look good.”

While people are often moving towards these neutral colors, that does not mean that all color is lost in these aesthetics. We see this in other aesthetics online such as the infamous 2020 indie kid aesthetic and the Y2K style that has been making a comeback in recent years. While it is a generalization, it is still a trend that is noticed mostly in people’s everyday wear and should not go unnoticed.

By no means is this movement towards these colors a negative thing nor should we expect this movement to stay. Trends change drastically over time and, even then, the outfits formed with these colors still are creative, interesting, and tell a story. Besides, you know what they say: Black goes with everything.