Not Mauve Again
20 November 2023
Are they really resuscitating mauve? How long has this been going on? When you’re in your sixties and retired with no hipster kids to keep you on trend, a mauve invasion can take you unawares. I’m not so out-to-pasture that I wear pants with no zipper and, yet, the vicissitudes of fashion tend to pass you by when you have only Emily in Paris to rely on and Season Four hasn’t even begun filming. My friends are certainly no help. One wears socks with Birkenstocks. The socks are hand-knitted but it makes no difference. We’ve all been wearing comfort shoes so long we genuinely believe they’re cute. The point is, we don’t know from fashion anymore. And how would we? Costco Connections and AARP Magazine are hardly look books of style, worthless rags that they are, just something more to stack up on your counter, the way you used to pile up the NYT Book Reviews, back when you could remember whether you took your vitamins.
Ah, fuck, I digress already, at least in my mind, because I cannot stop thinking of those bygone days of the now-to-be-reviled blue plastic bags on the front walk and the pretense of knowledge the inky papers inside allowed me to exhibit at dinner parties, especially when I actually read the Book Review.
Another digression! If a celebrity poet can sling fucks around like water balloons in a best-selling memoir about divorcing her rubbish husband–Go, Maggie Smith!–then have I the permission to toss around only the occasional fuck here and there, since mauve, admittedly, is not as bad as a husband who cheats on you for being famous? Still, and this is the point, mauve is not going to make anyplace beautiful.
Yes, back to mauve. Young people! It was everywhere in the 80s.Sort of like macrame in the 70s except those old plant hangers with the big wooden beads were stuffed in the back of your grandmother’s closet for you to rediscover, repurpose, and most importantly, resell another day. Not so with mauve. There is no Sunset Book of Mauve. No one intentionally saved anything mauve for its color. No one.
What’s wrong with it??? Not pink. Not brown. Not purple. But stripping the best from all three. Think of the possible paint chip names. Running with Plums? Pink(ISH) Purge? Discount Pork Roast?
Please, Corporate Overlords, manipulate our spending in a more sustainable fashion. Let not our landfills become (apologies in advance) mountains of mauve. And young people, say no to mauve the way your parents should have said no to drugs. Wait twelve months, or maybe just six, and you will be over it, same as you survived your crush on Johnny Lovell in fifth grade
