Chapter 1: What is the significance of beige in today's internet culture?
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Welcome to Werner Herzog's new line of children's clothing. Sad beige clothes for sad beige children.
This is Werner Herzog. Okay, rather, it's an impression of the German filmmaker Werner Herzog by Richmond, Virginia, Hayley DeRoche.
I am a librarian slash poet slash writer.
Hayley is also very online, where she spends a lot of time thinking and posting about color.
If you could give Richmond, Virginia, a single color, what would it be?
Ooh, that's a good question. I think right now it would have to be yellow-green, like, well, I guess, yeah, yellowish-green for the pollen.
It's probably more accurate to say Haley spends a lot of time thinking about one specific color. The neutral, inoffensive, and frankly, a little boring, beige.
Beige. Beige. Beige. Beige. Beige clothes. Beige children.
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Chapter 2: How does Hayley DeRoche define 'sad beige'?
Some would say Pantone, a design company known for its proprietary color matching system. Each December, Pantone announces a color of the year.
Past year's colors include Viva Magenta.
Viva Magenta!
Living Coral, Marsala, Radiant Orchid. The 2026 color of the year is... Cloud Dancer.
Hold me close to Cloud Dancer. That's the only reaction I have to that. Wait, I thought it was white.
Yeah, that's what Cloud Dancer is, basically. Ding, ding, ding.
It's white? The color is white?
It's like, well, no, they would say it's Cloud Dancer, but it's basically white. So some people thought that this was a big joke, but Pantone was quite serious about the choice, describing Cloud Dancer as, quote, a lofty white that serves as a symbol of calming influence in a society rediscovering the value of quiet reflection.
It is very hard not to react to the idea as lofty white being an influence in society. But I'm just going to let it keep going and say, woof. Even if the colorless color of the year was a tongue-in-cheek trolling moment, which apparently it wasn't, this trend towards neutrals has been a long time brewing. A long time neutraling? A long time... Stirring? Paint mixing? Paint mixing?
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Chapter 3: What role do algorithms play in our color preferences?
I'm curious about the narrative behind the reason for the beige, though, because I'm hearing two things. One is that the beige is kind of—it's calming for your child, that this is a calming color palette. And the other is much more—
Aesthetic, the aesthetic of the home, the idea that these toys, those stacking cups, if they're bright colors, that doesn't blend in with the rest of your home and it just looks tacky or chaotic or something. So you're a parent, yes? Yes. Do you feel like there's any weight behind the beige color palette being calmer or a better experience for the child?
I don't know that it's... a universal experience that a child who has like all beige toys is going to be a calm child. I think, and I kind of talk about this in my book too, that the child you get is the child you get. And there is going to be a child who is very calm, who lives in a beige environment. And there's going to be a child who lives in a beige environment who is just bananas.
And I think we as parents like to attribute our children's, what we perceive to be good nature or good habits or good behavior to
as the result of our choices uh because that feels good and parenting is hard and you want to you know you take the wins where you can right um as to whether or not there's any truth in that it might be a little but i think a lot of it comes down to us wanting our children to behave a certain way and when they do and that aligns with what we have done then we can pat ourselves on the back um
I don't think that, you know, being subjected to a bounce house that's red and green is really any different than a bounce house that's beige or opal.
You have been playing with this on TikTok. You frequently review kids' beige clothes in the voice of German director beloved Werner Herzog.
Yes.
This one I call the Velvet Flare of Despair, for she knows that sheep farming is a rough life, one that will bring many a callous to the hands of the heart.
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Chapter 4: Who are the tastemakers influencing color trends?
Werner Herzog does seem like an odd choice to be the face of a children's clothing line. But it actually also makes a weird amount of sense, right? Like at first blush, everything Verona says seems serious and weighty. But if you're familiar with this work, it's actually kind of ridiculous and funny even when it's not trying to be.
There is something serious about the beige aesthetic, though. Haley says that online, it's become a sort of class signal.
So what I'm seeing online is it kind of the trickle down from the row and from Kim Kardashian, rather high-end brands, down to the peasants like myself. And so I think that when that happens, it just kind of becomes a natural signifier of class. And also, especially when it's tied to things like Montessori or Waldorf, you also are signaling that you buy into a certain, like,
aesthetic for education for your child and that you can afford it in a lot of cases.
Chapter 5: What is Pantone's influence on color selection?
And so I think that there's just a lot of signaling going on with what you dress your baby in, what stroller you're using for your baby, what baby carrier, if you're using wraps, which wraps. There's a huge online market for like very specific woven wraps and they'll have like limited editions and all of this stuff. And I mean, I fell into that myself when my kids were little.
There was like a wrap that I so desperately wanted and it was just impossible to find and it became like my white whale. And it's like, did it matter in the end? No, but it felt good to like find something and want it and seek it and have some sort of purpose in the midst of the chaos of parenting, which isn't necessarily a class signifier.
But I do understand why people kind of latch on to things that they can control. And image is a big one.
In my mind, it also kind of, there's a crossover with minimalism, you know, not having a bunch of excess stuff. And so the idea, like the stacking cups in particular, the idea that toys would become beige is a way to help them sort of blend into the background so that visually there's less stuff, even if physically there isn't. Yeah. Absolutely.
Does that resonate or is it like, is there actually a connection between like the minimalist lifestyle and the minimization of color diversity?
I do think yes, to a certain degree. I also wonder if there's some greenwashing going on there, where if you have toys that are very natural colors, even if they're plastic, they're less likely to call attention to themselves as like plastic junk.
Yeah, I confess I am guilty of coveting the beige stacking cups. I am only a parent to a rabbit, a pet rabbit. who loves those little stacking cups. And I have the brightly colored ones because I didn't know the more neutral toned ones existed. And then when I saw the more neutral toned ones, I was like, oh, that would look nicer.
So I think I'm guilty of this, even though I am a fan of color, I promise. It's just, I don't know. I was shocked to hear that example and see a finger being slowly pointed at myself.
Have you, now that you've wanted the sad beige stacking cups for your rabbit, have you considered what preschool you'll be sending them to? Because there may be a six to seven year wait list and the tuition is going to be six times more than you thought.
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Chapter 6: How does minimalist design relate to color choices?
You give that a plus 100?
I do. I do. And I think... There's a sameness. Everyone's getting a lot of the same stuff fed to them online. You can be in bucket one, bucket two, bucket three, but they're all very similar products. You're all ultimately being fed kind of the same stuff. I talk a bit in my book, in a comedic sense, about algorithms as well.
I actually have a couple pieces from the point of view of the algorithm as kind of an entity that's just... insatiable and hungry for your eyes and your attention and your money. And the flattening, I think, just comes from pushing the stuff out to as many people as possible. So being kind of same reaches a lot of people as opposed to being unique.
And is it being driven by the Internet or is the Internet just like reflecting it, like Uber reflecting it? Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know. I mean, it's almost chicken and egg, right?
Yeah.
We have become Internet. And so is Internet us?
We are Internet. We are all Internet now.
Yes, we are all Internet. Internet is us now.
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