Fashion fawns over a certain shade of pastel pink

By

Kate Dingwall

Published
Mar 22, 2017

Brands are thinking pink: more and more brands are looking to a specific shade of what is sometimes called ‘millennial pink’ to help move products. The pastel, slightly muted shade of pink seems to pop up everywhere, from haute couture runways to cosmetics packaging to rap album covers.

The pink hue has been creeping into the fashion world slowly. Paul Smith first opened a bubblegum-pink store in Los Angeles in Los Angeles in 2005. In 2007, Acne Studio began sending customers home with pastel pink shopping bags and shoe boxes. After #palepink became the most popular pink tag on Tumblr in 2014, the team at Tumblr dubbed that particular shade of pink “Tumblr pink”.

The shade of pink really took hold in 2015, when Pantone declared Rose Quartz as one of the colors of 2016. The prediction was spot on: the color has since popped up everywhere and anywhere: buzzy beauty brand Glossier’s product packaging features pale pink typography, while Opening Ceremony Vans has launched a line of pastel-hued sneakers. In 2016, both Diesel and Calvin Klein launched major campaigns, both that featured famous faces against, you guessed it, a pale pink background. 

Mansur Gavriel and Pop & Suki dedicated entire pop-up shops to the hue, with both the decor of the store and the stocked products in this particular shade of pink.

The shade isn’t limited to fashion either. The album art for Drake’s Hotline Bling single was the same shade of pale pink. Apple launched its Rose Gold, also referred to by consumers as pink, shade of iPhone in late 2015. Even Le Creuset rolled out a series of pale pink cookware last February. 

This shade has spawned onto the runway as well: Gucci has looked extensively to shades of pastel pink over the past few seasons, seeing the color on hyper-feminine dresses and more masculine dress shirts and suits. Rihanna put forward a line of all-pink looks for her Fenty Puma collection presented in Paris last fall. In the couture realm millennial pink was featured heavily in Chanel, Giambattista Valli, and Schiaparelli’s offerings at the most recent haute couture week,

While pink may traditionally be associated with women’s products, the new Millennial pink has no gender boundaries: the shade of pink is even finding its way onto low-top sneaker in a shade of blush. Drake donned a pastel pink puffer by Stone Island last month, and the color subsequently flew off the shelves, selling out in nearly every retailer that carried the coat.