the color of good taste: western fashion’s chromophobic impulse

reflections from Mexico City

Happy Saturday everyone!

Most of this week really sucked. I was sick with a nasty cough and couldn’t stroll 3 laps around my block without feeling winded and self conscious about freaking people out with my violent coughing fits. Tattoo appointments were canceled. Chicken noodle soup was slurped. I randomly decided to watch Games of Thrones lol???? I haven’t really been Outside or spoken many words out loud in the past 5 days, thus I am feeling extremely socially awkward. Being sick in the thick of summer is a uniquely grotesque experience.

Whenever I’m sick, all I can think about is how BAD it feels, and how much I want to be healthy for the sake of my quality of life. I want to attend birthday dinners, writer meet-ups, eat anything other than chicken noodle soup. Actual health, and not aesthetics-masquerading-as-health. This the silver lining: it always forces me to get my priorities straight.

Today’s essay is about my recent trip to Mexico City. My favorite memories, what I did instead of vintage shopping, letting go of “do it all” itinerary mindset, and reflections on chromophobia in Western fashion discourse.

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mandatory 3-hour rest at hotel every day before dinner :)

I came back about a week ago and am *still* processing the rush of artistic inspiration from my time there. If you have been to Mexico City, you know what I mean! Creative expression flows through every aspect of public life.

The last time I visited was before the pandemic in 2018 (peak Contramar era, right before Gabriela Cámara released her first cookbook). I felt very young, in retrospect. I remember loving the red and green grilled snapper and marveling at how the white tablecloths spilled out into the lush, humid greenery of the street. I wore my most “special” dress for our reservation that evening, a black cotton A-line dress from Kowtow. Even then I knew that industry machinations shaped restaurant recommendations and that there’s plenty of grilled snappers in the world that taste just as good or better—they just don’t make it on lists or fancy magazines or the substack travel rec chats! But. That was the magical memory that lulled me back: the first bite of tuna tostada during golden hour in Condesa with the sound of taxis and fountains in the background.

It was a different experience this time, not better or worse but simply its own experience. Some of my favorite memories:

• the first bite of my green chorizo taco at Mercado Jamaica, under a ceiling of hanging piñatas

• sitting at Entremar and eavesdropping on the table over, a group of women that looked very Real Housewives of Polanco having a top tier gossip session

• walking home at night with a hot chocolate de agua in one hand and warm bag of churros in the other, cinnamon dust rubbing onto my sleeve

• people-watching all the 35mm art hoes who visit the Barragán houses (let’s be real, the house itself is part of the attraction but your fellow tour group is another and that’s just the truth)

• the soft pitter patter of evening rain on my umbrella, and the fresh tropical smell the morning after

• noticing how much visible political street art there was engrained in the city (geNOcidio stickers in the subway, zines in bookstores about colonization, Free Palestine murals and graffiti)

• pillowy conchas which I wanted to just SQUISH

I thought I would do a lot of vintage shopping in Mexico City. Prior to my trip, I bookmarked every shop and flea market mentioned on various listicles and guides. I read up on Talía Cu’s Latin Zine (excellent resource for staying plugged into Latin American fashion!). I wrote about the rise in vintage shopping tourism here. The gist: the aspirational travel industry (a la Condé Nast Traveler) sells us the the rich creative class fantasy of coming home with suitcase stuffed with Cool Artisanal Hand Crafted Single Origin One Of a Kind objects.

I did check out a few vintage stores in Roma because it’s a dense walkable neighborhood, but I just wasn’t really in the right mindset for it. Wasn’t in the mood. What I was in the mood for: more green chorizo tacos, resting at the hotel, googling the history of blue corn, people-watching the line at Panadería Rosetta, more churros, reading my overpriced airport book, taking a nice long shower before getting ready for dinner (the best thing about any vacation), lingering in the park to stare at the cute dogs. Also, as a proud slow walker I love Mexico City. I hate being rushed and here, you can really saunter. Stop and smell the mangoes. Also, it’s ok if you are feeling kind of bored at a museum and want to leave early. All to say…make your restaurant and shopping lists but don’t feel like you have to follow them. The guava roll at Rosetta is good but you can also eat a different pastry or go to a different bakery and you are still experiencing Mexico City!

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why are americans so afraid of color?

I think the first thing most Americans visiting Mexico City notice is the colors. Houses are painted in saturated shades of blue, red, pink, green, and any combination you can imagine.

Then you notice the smaller bursts of color. The magenta and white taxi cabs. The rainbow metro stop logos. Multicolor candies on a street vendor cart.

One day, while waiting for an Uber, I popped into a random makeup store. I like looking at how the differences in products, formulas and application technique reflects cultural values regarding feminine presentation. The only eyeshadow palette they sold in the store had 3 little pots of “neutral” pinkish beige colors, and 2 main pots: a piercing cobalt blue and plummy purple. This palette wasn’t branded as a “seasonal” or “special edition,” it just was. That moment made something click in my brain: I live in a culture where bright colors are FAR from the norm/default. The American relationship with color is defined by fear and anxiety.

Western chromophobia stems from a long cultural history that belittles, rejects and erases color because of its threat to white supremacist notions of civilization and refinement. This quote from 18th century German writer Johann Wolfgang van Goethe captures the colonial view that laid the groundwork for why present-day black and white minimalism is viewed as serious and of good taste:

Men in a state of nature, uncivilized nations and children, have a great fondness for colors in their utmost brightness […] people of refinement avoid vivid colors in their dress.

this is how the legacy of chromophobia shows up in the way we talk about clothes and fashion here:

We say that black is the most “slimming” color. We worry about outfits having “too much color” but rarely worry about “too little color.”

Styling trends are often centered on a “pop” of color. Just a little bit.

There is a profitable industry around seasonal color analysis and dressing in the colors that look “best” on you.

Most of us believe there are certain colors we “cannot pull off.”

We are conditioned to dress in neutral, masculine colors when we want to convey professionalism or authority.

It’s this fear and anxiety experienced on a mass scale that creates homogenous minimalist aesthetics and beigescape IG grids.

In his book Chromophobia, art writer David Batchelor analyzes how Western culture has (literally) tried to whitewash art and architecture by pathologizing color as infantile, savage, vulgar, oriental, feminine, etc. In modern times, this manifests when colorful dress is criticized for looking folksy, low taste, tacky, etc.

If you prefer wearing black and white, I don’t think you should suddenly change the way you like to dress. And the reality is that there can be a social cost to dressing more colorfully, particularly if you’re POC with a feminine presentation. A lot of workplaces will implicitly view colorful expression as frivolous, imaginative, unable to be controlled, Bad Traits To Have As A Worker etc.

Of course, there are many reasons why we gravitate towards certain colors. But it’s always worthwhile to learn about the water we’re swimming in, so to speak—the culture of chromophobia and how it might impact (or hold us back from) our fullest sartorial expression. Also, black and white are, scientifically speaking, colors. We just don’t view them as “real” colors because of the chromophobic categorization of “vivids” vs “non vivids.”

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Mexico City is colorful.

But that statement still reinforces a norm of colorlessness, because it’s like—colorful relative to what? Is Mexico City especially colorful or are Western countries just colorless?

xoxo

viv