[ARTICLE] Dark Thoughts on the Season's Bright Palette

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/fashion/21COLO.html
November 21, 2004
Dark Thoughts on the Season's Bright Palette
By JENNIFER TUNG
If Peter Sellers were still alive, he would be horrified by two of the
season's most pervasive fashion trends. And they aren't the trench coats
and tweed hats favored by Inspector Clouseau.
Sellers couldn't stand the colors green and purple. Notoriously
superstitious and neurotic, he banned them from his movie sets after a
psychic told him they were unlucky. That psychic is played by Stephen Fry
in the new HBO movie "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers." In one scene
he tells Sellers, played by Geoffrey Rush, that green is the unluckiest
color, adding, "It's positively fatal." Sellers quickly pulls off his
dark green cardigan.
As for Sellers's purple phobia, the director Blake Edwards witnessed it
regularly while shooting the "Pink Panther" movies. Mr. Edwards recalled
one incident involving the mother of his wife, Julie Andrews. "He ordered
my mother–in–law off the set because she came on wearing a purple coat,"
Mr. Edwards said last week. "I was standing near him when she came
through the stage door. He made a devil's gesture at her and said, `Get
that woman off,' and I said, `That woman is my mother–in–law.' He turned
to me and said, `Then get rid of her coat.' He hated purple, among many
other things."
Anyone with similar color aversions can relate right now. Since August,
stores have been filled with clothing, handbags and shoes in green shades
ranging from apple to kelly to emerald to moss. A minipalette of
lavender, violet and plum is a close second. Last spring and summer,
orange and lemon yellow were fashion's It shades, and for more than a
year now, hot pink has had a stranglehold on store shelves.
Sadly, fashionable women who happen to despise the color of the moment
(which is set years in advance by trend forecasting companies paid by
design houses) can't banish it from the streets. Instead they cope, using
a range of tactics eerily similar to the five stages of grieving: denial,
anger, bargaining, depression and, for the intrepid, acceptance (in small
doses).
"I hate the green color that is such the rage," said Pamela Feick,
regional sales director for the Santa Monica, Calif., hotels Shutters on
the Beach and Casa del Mar. "It's not that it's a bad color for me. It's
actually flattering. But it reminds me of the pea soup I had after my
tonsils were removed in kindergarten and immediately threw up." So
vehement is her aversion that Ms. Feick, who lives in Manhattan, can't
even tolerate the color on other people. "My friend wears this gorgeous
wrap, and it looks so good on her, and I know she spent a fortune, but I
still think, `Ew, it's good for this season, but then what?' "
Vanessa Hambidge, the director of programming at CBS Sports in New York,
detests pink. "Ever since I was a kid, I've had a mental allergy to
Pepto–Bismol," she said. "It actually makes me retch to look at a bottle.
Hence my problem with everyone pushing pink dresses on me. Pink is not my
new black. I'll do the occasional preppy sweater, but this head–to–toe
baby–doll thing I see grown women sporting is too much. I'm not 12."
Ms. Hambidge is not alone. "I loathe pink," said June Ambrose, a New York
stylist whose clients include Missy Elliott and Jay–Z. "When I see women
wearing it, I cringe. If I had a citation book, I'd write tickets on the
spot. I'd just like to remix it for them."
Alix Madigan, the head of features at Anonymous Content, a film
production company in Los Angeles, would like to outlaw the color, too.
"Pink is everywhere, and I would never wear it," she said. "It's a really
big conspiracy."
For Julie Rothman, a publicist for CNBC, it is also an eyesore. "When I
see women on the street in pink, I say things out loud — not to them, but
to myself." she said. "I'll say, `What was she thinking?' " After several
seasons Marea Adams, owner of the M F Adams Gallery in Dumbo, in
Brooklyn, finally found a shade of pink she could tolerate. "It's paler,
prettier and more sophisticated than that dumb hot pink that my 19–year–
old has been wearing since she was 16," she said.
As the color designer for Prescriptives cosmetics in New York, Poppy King
is paid to know which tones flatter and which don't. "There's been this
tremendous shift to bold, clean, clear colors, but it's hard to
incorporate them," she said. "When they work, they really, really work,
and when they don't, they're horrid. Most of what I see on the streets is
done in error. If something makes you look tired, it doesn't suit you."
That hasn't kept Ms. King from making her own mistakes in the name of
fashion. "I keep on buying green things and giving them to the same
friend," she said. "The problem is I wear red lipstick every single day,
and when I wear green I look like a Christmas elf at Macy's."
Kim Akhtar, the owner of Garde Robe, a luxury clothing storage company in
New York, had a similar experience with a bright orange Hermès shawl last
summer. "I felt like a very large clementine in it," she said. "I've
never worn it out." So she resisted fall's emerald green. "I have an
olive complexion, so it makes me look like the Jolly Green Giant," she
said. "But I would wear olive green because it goes with my skin better.
You can tailor the shade of the season so it looks quite good on you."
Another solution is to use the shade as an accent kept as far from the
face as possible, "like a wallet, card case or iPod cover," suggested Eva
Jeanbart–Lorenzotti, the founder and chief executive of the shopping Web
site Vivre.com. Tracey Ross, the owner of the eponymous Los Angeles
boutique, said: "I happen to love purple and green, but I look abominable
in yellow, which will be big again next spring, so I'll buy an accessory.
Yellow will always look good on my feet."
For every woman wrestling with a high–fashion color she hates, there's
another who remains blissfully, stylishly oblivious. "I ignore it. I
don't buy it," said Ann Dexter Jones, the nightclub designer. "I wear
what I like and what feels good, and it never bothers me if I'm wearing —
perish the thought — last year's color."
Lois Freedman, director of operations for the chef Jean–Georges
Vongerichten, echoed that. "I don't like to wear the same color that
everyone else is wearing. Once you see a trend happening, it's over."
Candy Pratts Price, the executive fashion director of Style.com, also
ignores current trends. She said: "I would never say: `I have to wear
yellow. It's the color of the season,' Then again, I carry white bags in
the dead of winter." Still, she appreciates fashion's love affair with
eye–popping tones. "It's great to see colors," Ms. Price said. "I mean,
what the hell is beige?"
Copyright 2004 The Ne