Does the world prefer grey over bright colours as TikTok suggests? A look at global fashion trends and what this means for India

For those of us culturally identified with colour, this preference can be seen as having racial overtones

A graph circulating on TikTok has revived a debate raging across the Internet. The graph, part of a non-peer-reviewed study that analyses colours of objects, suggests that greys and blacks are taking over the world.

It all arises from a 2020 blog post by researchers analysing colour in 7,000 photographs of objects (from the 1800s to 2020) — from a few British museums and cutting across 21 sections of objects, including household appliances. Grey, concluded the study, is the dominant colour today.

From furnishing experts to fashion icons, everyone is weighing in on this. Some say neutrals, being soothing, are bound to be king in our stressful world. Others are urging the world to embrace colour and “individuality”. Yet others are pointing to a long-standing colour conspiracy — that the West has a hatred of colour.

In his book  Chromophobia (2000), Scottish artist and writer David Batchelor argues that “colour is often represented as feminine or Oriental or primitive or infantile” and that this colour bias is linked to “issues of race, culture, class and gender”. He makes the point that “Chromophobia manifests itself in the many and varied attempts to purge colour from culture, to devalue colour, to diminish its significance, to deny its complexity.” He explores the West’s past, going back to thinkers such as Aristotle, who preferred line over colour as being more sophisticated and intellectual.

A popular meme that time and again pops up on social media saying that “people who wear black have colourful minds” bears this out — suggesting that people who wear colour are somehow dull in the head.

For those of us culturally identified with colour, this can be seen as having racial overtones. As the famous observation by former  Vogue editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland goes: ‘pink is the navy blue of India’.

Another popular theory on colour is that human clothing tends to just simply be aligned with nature. Clothing simulates the local weather. So while the sun scorches down on Rajasthan, women wear bright reds and oranges. In London, where the weather is cold and grey, people favour blacks and greys. In Spain and Goa, where people live near the sea, the clothes have a freer, lived-in feel, as people are more relaxed.