Millennial Pink: Conquering the world one design at a time

It's a shade that has silently taken over the world. You might've been wearing it without having noticed that the colour connects you to a generation that decides trends for themselves (and marketeers simply have to roll with it). Oddly-enough, Millennial pink is not one shade. It's a spectrum, which starts at desaturated Barbie pink and ends at a lighter tinge of blush — the kind that leans towards beige. And it's being sported and displayed everywhere — from the rose gold iPhone cooling your palm, to the Sabyasachi lehenga that Bollywood's gen-next Jhanvi Kapoor sported for his Udaipur Collection Spring Couture 2017 earlier this month.

"The whole millennial revolution is fast catching up in India. The colour is an evolution of India's favourite festive pinks, only in more subtle tones," say fashion designer duo Shivan and Narresh.

Millennial pink is a colour that has defied the cycle of trends. It stayed in the feminine domain for time immemorial. Enter the Millennials — not bound by definitions and firm holders of sexuality-is-a-spectrum belief. As they've been doing with things of vintage nature (think vinyl records, polaroids, audio cassettes, tamagotchis and Nokia 3310), it is this lot that has put their force behind the colour, pushing it into androgynous waters — breaking away from the generations-old notion of pink being a colour for girls, and a more recent connection with gay men. And it is here, at the cusp that the colour has found flourish. Millennial pink allows for a better expression. It is confident but without the sharp edges. It is brave yet aesthetically pleasing. It demonstrates a willingness to break barriers, set a new path and move forward.

"Millennial pink has become a sort of nuanced neutral," explains award-winning architect and interior designer Ashiesh Shah. "Unlike the pinks that have been in trend before, it's a lot more androgynous and muted."

Shivan and Narresh, who've used the colour for their Mailot swim pieces, echo Shah when they add: "The colour has a certain gender-neutrality associated with its particular tones. It's appropriate for new-age consumption in silhouettes like swim, resortwear, hoodies, bombers and even sneakers."

From a design perspective, Shah feels the colour adds softness to a space. "It works very well with masculine tones such as green, grey and black. And it fits seamlessly with brass and copper details. It works very well on upholstery, carpets and curtains. I've also used Millennial pink coloured furniture in my projects," he says. "It's sophisticated, elegant and yet playful."

The playfulness that Shah refers to is perhaps what has kept the colour's stock soaring. In 2014, the Colour Marketing Group, a global non-profit that forecasts colour for design and colour professionals, had picked Shim, a deep pink-beige, as the emerging colour for 2016, and Pantone too selected Rose Quartz (along with Serenity) as the colour of 2016. But we are nearly halfway through 2017, and designers, creators and innovators are not even close to being done with it.

Art & Architecture

Artist and designer Marc Ange's Le Refuge was the most Instagrammed installation at Milan Design Week this year. The bed and its leafy canopy was coated in Millennial pink. A few years ago, in 2014, British artist David Shrigley and designer India Mahdavi changed the face of the London restaurant Sketch to everything pink. Mahdavi repeated the feat for RED Valentino's store in London and for the Ralph Pucci collection in New York in 2016.

 

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Incidentally, the colour's first documentation shows up in French painter Jean-Honore Fragnoard's 1767 painting The Swing. More than a century later, then Maharaja Ram Singh of Jaipur painted the entire city pink when the Prince of Wales and Queen Victoria visited India on a tour in 1876. And who can forget Russian jeweller Peter Carl Fabrege's Easter egg, called Moscow Egg, which featured a Millennial pink castle holding the egg, for Tsar Nicholas II in 1906.

Technology

Apple used pink in its iMac G3 computers in 1998 but the Paris Hilton wave swallowed their bold attempt. Dell's Inspiron laptop series came close to using a Millennial pink casing in 2007, which too received a lukewarm response. It was only in 2012 when Asus introduced its ZenBook that Rose gold set a nervous foot in the tech world. Two years later, the colour scaled new heights when Apple unveiled the Apple Watch, serving the 18-karat Rose gold shade on an iPlatter. The company even used the shade for its iPhone 6 casing. Three years on, India's Formula One team, Sahara Force India, has introduced a new livery in all Millennial pink, doing a one-up on Cadillac's Mary Kay cars from the late 1960s.

Popular culture

The year 2017 dawned with Millennial pink phenomena when protesters in 'pussycat caps' marched against US president Donald Trump in Washington DC and around the world in January 2017. A couple of years earlier, rapper Drake paved the path for a Millennial pink explosion when he grooved to Hotline Bling — white letters plastered on a pink flyer, et al. And no prizes for guessing who was nominated for a whole lot of awards in 2014 for his pink-infused cinematic wonder that was The Grand Budapest Hotel. You know a style is here to stay when it's endorsed by Wes Anderson!

Fashion and the red carpet

For the promotion of his self-titled debut album earlier this year, Harry Styles of One Direction fame, picked Gucci. He sported two shades from the Millennial pink spectrum, for his Saturday Night Live performance. Gucci, incidentally, is the luxury house to blame for whipping up a Millennial pink hysteria. Creative director Alessandro Michele's collection and clever marketing and sales strategy had everyone lining up outside Gucci stores in 2016. Thanks in no small part to Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett and to Jared Leto, undoubtedly one of the ultimate hipsters of Hollywood and alt-rock music.

Closer home, Manish Malhotra has continued his love affair with the shades in his 2017 Summer Couture collection even as his contemporary, Sabyasachi, took the colour for a spin in his latest collection. Now, didn't Jhanvi Kapoor look pretty in that Millennial pink lehenga?